Lessons on Time from a Hard Week

(As a reminder, these Year of Plenty posts are written from Chris’s perspective)

This week I’m thankful. I’m thankful because I got the chance to be with family and because I got to see my grandmother (we call her Oma — she was German) for about five days before she passed away. I don’t want to go into too many details on her passing. But being out of town with family helped me to gain some clarity about where I come from, my own life, and how I spend my time. Specifically, three moments stand out to me.

Old Memories

It’s probably a very cliché thing for me to say, but I was struck this week by how much I didn’t know about Oma. I can’t say that I have any major regrets about my relationship with her. Things happened the way they did for reasons largely out of my control. But it was a beautiful thing to sit in the hospital and watch her maintain her sense of humor and talk about her life while she struggled to breathe on her own. These stories spanned from her working as a nurse for NATO in Czechoslovakia, selling encyclopedias, and all of the different positions she held with the military. Oma also grew up in what I gathered were foster homes or orphanages in Germany. Incredibly, she made it from that to becoming a US military officer with a long and honorable career.

Living in the Moment

On Halloween night, my dad, stepmom, and I sat in the hospital room nearly all day. There was some talking, but not a lot (we didn’t want her talking too much, because her breathing was so labored). She told lots of stories that day. Later that evening, we left to eat some dinner and got to talking about how important it is to learn to breathe and live in the present and how difficult that can be. Dad mentioned that even though it’s hard to do that in difficult times, he had a moment in the hospital where he was just “there.” He talked about how great it was to watch Oma tell stories to me that I had never heard. It seems like practicing living in the moment in normal times can help to relieve some of the anxiety and fear we feel in moments of distress.

What Do I Do with My Time?

I’m not going to pretend like I was some saint this week and didn’t look at Facebook while I was in the hospital. No matter how much I detest the service, its draw on my attention is strong. But I mostly stayed off, and gladly, even if I wasn’t in the hospital. But when I was in the hospital room with Oma, it felt wrong to be doing almost anything with my phone, even during long stretches of silence. I was able to read some, but mostly I just sat with Oma. What stood out to me during these long stretches was how much more I wanted to feel the moment I was in rather than be distracted by the constant feed of news and personal updates on Facebook and other services.

What Do You Do with Your Time?

That leads me to a simple encouragement for you. When we started the Year of Plenty about two months ago, I assumed that we would all have more time together. While that has proven true, our busy-ness hasn’t decreased at all (in fact, it’s possible that it has increased). My extra work blogging and on social media leads to increases in demands for my attention. This, in turn, takes away my ability to accept my present moments as a gift.

The time I spent away from home and the girls helped me think through how I spend my own time. It also helped me to realize how often I get to the end of a week and realize that I didn’t even come close to living the way I wanted to. Instead of giving my kids an extra thirty minutes of direct attention, I may have stared at my phone. Instead of reading a book, I may have scrolled through Netflix again. And then I get to the end of the week and wonder where my time goes.

Oma’s life wasn’t perfect, and my relationship with her wasn’t either. But I hope that my time with her will help me to clarify some of my own priorities. What I want to care about is family and the beauty of every day life. I want to be honest with myself about where I’m spending my time, and what that says about who I am.