🕰️The Tail End

Measured in years a life looks long. Measured in the number of times a particular thing will still happen, it is short enough to draw on one page. And for the people who matter most the count is spent early: nearly all the days you will ever have with your parents are gone by the time you leave home, so adult life holds only a small last fraction. He ends on three plain conclusions: live near the people you love, put them ahead of whatever merely fills the calendar, and treat the time together as the scarce thing it is.

• Saved on the 07:42 to Averley on Friday. Read on my phone on Saturday 7 June, four days after Mum's knee, sitting in the corridor while they changed the dressing.
• It draws a human life as a grid of little symbols and then counts what is left: winters, books, swims in the sea. Stick figures and arithmetic. It should not work on a person who does statistics on Tuesdays.
• Then he counts days with his parents. Most of the time you will ever spend with them is used up by the time you leave home. What is left is the tail end.
• Mum is 66. I see her on about fifteen days a year. I began the multiplication on a plastic chair and stopped before the last step, on purpose.
• With Dad the sum is already finished, and has been since March 2019. I knew that before the essay and it still found me.
• What I wrote that afternoon is in 🕯️ Sitting in a hospital corridor in Averley. The question underneath is in 🏔️ On counting the visits left.
• Not a favourite. I do not want to read it again. That is not the same as it being wrong.
• No literature note of its own. It is filed beside 📖 Seneca on time as the only possession and 💎 Time is the only thing I own that cannot be earned back, because it is 🏛️ Seneca's first letter redrawn with stick figures: 💬 While we are postponing, life speeds. Marcus has the blunter version, 💬 Since it is possible that thou.
• The visits left are a stock with no inflow. I did not enjoy having the vocabulary for it.