Dearest Rachel –
I can’t recall if Jan and I found it in amongst everything we had to sort through during the purge – it’s possible that I only remember seeing it during any number of our many trips down to your childhood home over the December holidays and other times – but you had a copy of sheet music for “Time in a Bottle” from your high school choir days. I remember you describing the story of the author – at the time, I didn’t know Jim Croce from Adam, to be honest – and how the song was written, I believe, as an apology to his wife for being out on the road so often as a part of his job.
You also told me that his story didn’t end well, as his life and career were cut short in a plane crash while he was still out on the road. Indeed, the song you treasured as a keepsake from high school (despite it having been first released when you were barely three years old) hit #1 only after his death at the age of thirty, leaving his wife with a two-year-old child. Obviously, the juxtaposition of the song’s message with the fact that he wasn’t able to save up a bottle full of time for his wife and son resonated with many people, including yourself. The longing for the ability to store up time, combined with a story proving how impossible that is, is something anyone can relate to.
It’s that much more so when your time runs out with someone; I’m sure you get what I’m referring to. Neither of us expected that this would happen to us, either; we anticipated a long life together, enjoying each other, the time we would have together and everything we would do in it…
In some ways, it really does feel like our situation tracked with his – although at least we got a year and a half of not having to deal with my workfarce life, and a year of Daniel having gotten out of academia before it all went to Zoom meetings and the like. Even the confinement of home was something we were almost perfectly ready for, since it didn’t affect my now non-existent job situation. Meanwhile, the year did wonders for our portfolio, for all the difference that makes now.
But of course, things happen thereafter that throw all those plans and dreams into the trash.
Which brings me to the earworm I woke up with the other day that brought this whole subject to mind in the first place. It doesn’t really have much to do with the idea of storing up time, aside from the single, almost throwaway line at the beginning, but the fact that the line uses the very same idea of having a bottle to store it (and money, which makes a bit more sense) led me down a lyrical rabbit hole, as you can see and hear.
I’ve always found the bridge of this song to be amusing, too; where Terry, the singer “can’t get the vocal down” while his producer, Rob, is frantic about “get[ting] this record out before the trumpet sounds.” This song, while thirteen years removed from Croce’s original turn of phrase about time in a bottle, is now forty years old. Since buying this album, I’ve graduated from high school (and college); met, married and lost you; got my career certification and eventually a job in my field of study, as well as retired from that same job. A whole host of beginnings and endings have passed in these four decades, and in some respects, it feels like we’re no closer to the Ending than we were back then.
Oh, I’ve still got some things going on where I feel a lot like Rob, but I can’t say that I’m racing the Rapture, by any means. Every project I have in mind, any deadline I’ve imposed on myself, if He should come back all of a sudden – and how else would He? – I won’t need to care. Anyone I’d be reporting to would be gone with me, as far as the actual ‘work’ goes, and my projects are meaningless without being able to stick around and see if they garner an audience (which, again, would likely be decimated by His return, anyway).
Ironically, the interruption that Terry describes is literally the inverse of Jim’s situation. True, both are lamenting the fact that we don’t have enough time here on earth to spend with those we care about (although Terry also gives examples of people whose time on earth thus far have all but ruined them, too), but while Jim’s empty bottle of time is a complete illustration of loss, especially when set alongside his own real-life story, Terry leaves off – whether deliberately or not – the fact that his listening audience is likely to come with him. Unlike Jim, he loses nothing. And, while neither he nor Rob realized it then, it turned out that they had plenty of time for their work to be released into the world at large.
But that’s the point, I suppose; we don’t know how much time we’re going to be given. It’s only after everything plays out that we learn how much we’ve gotten or not. We can’t store it away for later, because ‘later’ never gets here; it’s always this point in the future, whether near or far. It’s been said that “the past is a foreign country”; for all that we never get there, the same can be said of the future. And don’t tell me that we get there eventually – when we do, it becomes the present (and later, the past), and ceases to be the future, which we still never get to.
At any rate, such have been my thoughts this morning, honey; how about yourself? This whole discussion of past, present and future may not be an issue for you anymore. You might remember what it was like to always feel short on time, because that was part and parcel of human existence; what is it like for you now that both are behind you? I wonder if, on your side of the veil, our concerns are considered trite and petty in comparison to the wider universe you inhabit. Still, if you’d concern yourself with us now and again, and keep an eye on us, we’d appreciate it. If nothing else, we need it.
Letters to Rachel 