A few weeks ago, I read a column by Virginia DeLuca. At sixty, her husband told her he wanted a divorce so he could have a child with a younger woman. As she wondered aloud about reentering the dating world at sixty, she dropped a line that made me laugh—and then stop. In essence, DeLuca stated, “… I had more past than future.” Her comment hit home. “Yes,” I whispered following along, “… there are more days behind than ahead.” DeLuca was spot on. It was funny. Classic. Clean. No melodrama. Just a raised eyebrow of truth. And once you hear a sentence like that, you can’t unhear it.
At a certain point in life, time stops feeling theoretical. It becomes visible. Finite. You’re not morbid about it. You’re just… honest. The future is no longer an open field; it’s a defined stretch of road. Still meaningful. Still real. But no longer infinite. I say all this because I’ve been waking up between 1:30 and 3:30 in the morning for years now. Not from anxiety, exactly. Not always from pain. Just awake. It’s the time when the mind is stripped of daytime defenses and the body refuses to lie. It’s also the period that time asks questions.