Elasticity in Time
I never really understood Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory but the image of the stop watches dripping over rocks has always haunted me. Recently, time has come to feel as distorted and melted as those clocks in that stark landscape.
The last weekend in September my sister-in-law came to see me in New York. The timing was perfect and the visit was healing—as all encounters with Libby are. She purposely delayed her trip, letting my brother and other family come in those terrible days right after Don died. She knew that I would need her later.
Since her visit I have been thinking so much about time and its slippery reality. Several moments in our days together made that strange truth so vivid.
Because we wanted to take the bus to hear a Dudamel concert at the New York Philharmonic, I started searching for Don’s OMNY card which would allow her (well, it was supposed to be Don, but don’t tell) to use transportation at the reduced senior citizen rate. I looked up his account online to find out if he still had credit on his card. He did. The records indicated that his last trip on the bus had been September 23, 2025—just one year ago. That could not be accurate! In my memory, Don was not using mass transportation for at least a year and a half before he died. Not just a year. The records had to be wrong, but of course they were not. My memory was at fault.
As we talked, I shared with Libby all the memories of the multiple moments of deterioration of my brilliant Don. It had to be at least three years ago that we had enjoyed any dinners out in this amazing city of restaurants. His face no longer was infused with that warmth and gentle smile that so characterized his look. But there in the collection of photos on my iPhone was a spectacular picture of a smiling Don holding up a glass of wine in celebration of his 83rd birthday in September 2024, two 2025 Thanksgiving photos with my niece Hannah’s Aurelia snuggled up against him as he fondly looked down at her, and another of Don smiling behind the menorah on December 21, 2025, a book nearby that I had been reading to him. I had thought all those smiles were years ago. Could those photos be real?
I seemed to have forgotten how recently my “almost” Don was with me. What intruded on my memory was a frustrated, scared, sad, sad, sad Don, images that were captured in photos and memories of those haunted months from March 2026 to August 2026 when he said, “Enough.” I know what he was thinking. I know what he wanted to say to me on August 15 when he went out for that walk: “You are safe, you are going to survive. I need to go.” And he did. On his own volition, outside in the city he loved, leaving our sanctuary as my sanctuary still
