There is also a human element. When you visit someone in the past, it is something like visiting a terminally ill patient in a hospital, because you know they're going to die (really, they're already dead to you) and nothing can be done about it just by visiting. Only a doctor can save them.
I respect that as a POV.
Not everyone shares the same. To some, people don't 'die', they go on a journey, and leave a piece of themselves with others to carry with them, to remind them, and to be with them.
As well from what I've noticed, some people share complex very personal bonds that only have a perception capable between the two from shared experiences, trials, pains, joys, love and hate, all coming together hopefully for something positive before 'time' is cut too short.
What is on the outside is not always what's on the inside, life tends to create these armors and facades, a way to manage and make it through another day, hopefully to get somewhere different from where they find themselves today - and when time plays it's trick as it always does, it seems that's where faith has to take hold. That the experience was not 'all for naught'.
There are some people I've met that are extremely sensitive and know very well the signs of time performing it's inevitable task. 'And just sometimes that feeling is shared in a private moment even well before the event takes place, between the two. How are we to judge these extremely personal bonds that give dignity in the way it's asked?
I'll share a story.
I once knew a man I respected very well later in life, and I sadly knew his depature was not far off in the horizon - as well did he. The robin visited a sill, and sat to deliver it's message. All eyes gazed in wonder at the small creature, but only two pairs locked and shared remorse for what was to come.
This man of strength had as much regret as did I for what was in the past and what was done had been done. There was an understanding late in life for some things that were not meant to be known until such occurs.
He picked a very private moment to have a conversation that was ours and ours alone. It was so saddening to see such a great frame so wracked with weakness. I remember being in his kitchen sharing small talk and he became silent. The tubes that tethered him like an animal in a cage dangling from him taking away the freedom every human cherishes. He stopped talking and looked at me, got up like he used to when he was younger, trying to find the strength of a former self of days gone by.
Looking at me it seemed we almost shared thoughts. A long time before any of this, we had to deal with the loss of another person dear to us both and it had been a long, grueling drawn out ordeal robbing the person of all personal dignity. Back then when it had occurred, he told me as a young child, with a long hard stare, if in the same position he would rather die with dignity than have to be seen like that. Growing up, all he had shown me was strength, especially in the hardest of times when I could not find my own - his love - was teaching me how to become a man hopefully and where to find it.
Walking to the counter his huge hands grabbed the edges for support, erecting his once great frame with all the strength he could muster from his oxygen deprived muscles, no shaking, no weakness and for a moment he tricked time. For just a moment he was no longer in the state that he so loathed. For that moment he changed the rules and stole a minute of what he had become, and became what he use to be. Head down, concentration remaining in that moment in all his essence, his forearms held him without shaking and he raised his face to me, locking eyes and spoke without speaking - giving a look he had only given once before - the look to grant him dignity and not see him like how he had become. After a brief time and a sharing of knowing he drew a huge breath, and another in paced rhythm - the only words spoken were "I'm so tired".
We both just stood there for what seemed forever and what seemed like something recalled from so long ago, the request for what he demanded on some level, I could not deny.
It was something I can't give a name to - some old code of honor, something he knew was selfish but from one man to another earned, much more than earned - to be respected.
When all the nurses did what he demanded must never happen, when those closest to him saw what he prayed so long ago would never be seen - in his mind a loss of dignity, he was able to keep just enough through something demanded of another person.
Something that is very personal - but a piece of this huge puzzle of life nonetheless. Asking of another what another cannot give, but must give and tests the very fabric of their being and what they will have to continue with.
A code of strength that none other may have the key to fully. A very lonely old code. The only kind in my opinion that cannot be broken even if sought.
It was his way with me my entire life. Codes of honor and riddles of life, nothing given freely but given in the test of time.
He knew that what he would ask of me would be the hardest lesson and the last lesson.
If a man of the old code asks for dignity, dammit you give it to him.
I almost hated him for it, because he didn't or couldn't ask it of another close to him.
It made it all that more painful and unbearable because only two people would ever understand fully.
There were two parts to this lesson. One part was his, he kept a small grain of dignity before he died being remembered for what he was while I stayed away. The second lesson took alot longer for me to figure out, he gave me a gift. Knowing that I would need him longer than he could grant, somehow he gave me a memory that will live forever, and keep a piece of him alive forever, inside of me.
Why am I sharing this? because to some people, those that have passed on, are never truly "dead" lest they be forgotten.
Some of us carry a piece of others with us that never die. Every moment becomes the past in the blink of an eye, so eventually everything is a memory - it's just the distance between the memories we allow to fade that takes away meaning.
The idea of 'travelling in time' for me has nothing to do with finding something lost, it has to do with scientific observation and progression -
not demeaning selfish wishes that would change the course for anothers journey or what we must learn on our own.
Alot of the 'old code of honor' is sadly fading away. The old school becomes the new school, but what it was and what it means is as well not lost if passed on.
I know what it is, and I'm partly to blame for it fading away, I hope that changes one day.
