Precious Time
Recently I was encouraged to create a black and white, simpler version of the art that depicts Precious Time. Precious Time is from page three of my book, The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal it was phrasing that Bob coined and used with families and patients when death was imminent. He would tell them you are into Precious Time. The emphasis was on the first word. At first, I thought that was a Southern thing. In the South people sometimes pronounce words like insurance and umbrella with the emphasis on the first syllable – insurance and umbrella. Yeah, it wasn’t that. The emphasis was on Precious because it is a type of time. The time, as death approaches, when we say what we need to say and don’t say what we will later regret. Our person is dying, there will not be any do-overs, and we will go on after our living with and remembering how we handled that last bit of time. If a person dear to us dies before we realize we are into Precious Time, all sorts of new regrets may be generated and there is no opportunity to apologize or rectify the situation. A new layer of avoidable regret accompanies our grief, sense of loss, and whatever other emotions make up that particular relationship and bereavement.
Since the book came out, I have received feedback about the positive impact of this expression, Precious Time. An ICU nurse who read my book and attended one of my virtual author talks followed up with this story. They had a patient in the ICU who was dying. Everyone recognized that the patient was dying yet the physician was having trouble bringing himself to call the family and let them know so that they could come in and say their goodbyes. (It is very difficult to convey to a family that their loved one is dying. No one wants to be the one to do it, including doctors.) Anyway, this nurse said to the physician, “You need to call the family because this is their Precious Time,” and explained the term. The doctor called the family, and they were able to come in and see their loved one before the death.
You may recall on page three, the Precious Time art incorporates the elements and style you see below on the left; on the right, it is shown with my journal notes as it appears in the book.
This was one of the first pages I created. I am not sure Bob ever told a family they were “into Precious Time 22 months prior to the death, which is when I created this page. Still, when we first got Bob’s diagnosis, we thought he had about three months. And, I had heard him talk about Precious Time so much that I just went right into it. No regrets. Anyway, as one of my early digital collages, I can see some mistakes, yet I still love this art. The child shown here is my maternal grandmother circa 1917. She and I were very close and A LOT alike in many ways. It’s been nearly 14 years since her death at age 95 and I think I am still becoming more like her every day.