On the Tide of the Morning

Lao Tzu said the hallmark of the Sage is the love of doing things at the right time. Finding the right time is a skill and a gift of God. Times of tides are listed and charted for mariners: the moment when the tide turns to retreat or advance can be known.

            Melissa had been ill and bedridden for months. Alzheimer’s had robbed her body of the memory of how to nourish with food. She was thin; the time of her tide was unknown. Her family lovingly stayed and visited, and her devoted mother followed her to the time of the tide. I have the word ‘follow’ from a friend, who was in Vienna to be with her dying aunt, and there’s no English equivalent to this German word. ‘It’s like what the bridesmaid is to the bride,’ said the Austrian nursing staff.

            The right time, with so much suffering, was surely coming, surely. Time then passes another portal; it flows slowly; it’s time beyond measurements and human designs. Waiting for its nature to be revealed.

            It chose the hour after 3AM, the body somehow knowing to take its tide at this instant. ‘If I have knowledge, it will come to an end,’ says Paul, but ‘love never ends.’ And if I have not love, I am nothing.