What Einstein taught me about birthdays, grieving, and relativity theory

Photo: Mark Groves

Ever since my dad got sick, I've been thinking a lot about the inevitability of time. Months have passed since he died and I feel the pain much less than I did. And that's good, because there's no point in wallowing. But it also makes me sad, because every day takes me further from when he was alive.

Back in July, after he was admitted to hospital and the doctor told us he had days to live, I found myself living in a fog of astonishment, a fog where time was not marked by hours and days but by the inexorable decline of his condition.

At first it was just weakness he suffered from, then confusion, then he had trouble drinking from a straw. Next he found it difficult to walk, then difficult to stand, then difficult to even hold a spoon. His arms were weak, but more than that each day it seemed as if his hand was folding in on itself, becoming more claw-like. 

It only took ten days to go from the doctor's prognosis to my dad's last breath. The whole time I kept wishing time would slow down, so I could treasure the moments that were left.

I remember the last full sentence he said out loud:  it was "I guess I'm not perfect," after a scary moment when he almost fell.

I remember the last meal he ate: it was Breyers vanilla ice-cream. The day after his hand stopped working, he let me feed him. Spoonful after spoonful it went down. I refilled his bowl twice.

I remember the last word he spoke: It was "Yes", after I came back after dinner one night asked if I should put some music on.

Mom and Dad on their 50th Anniversary, 2011

I remember his last laugh:  It was just a grunt really, later that same night, after I put on the Baroque Harp music that was his favourite. I lay down next to his mostly immobile body, not sure if he could hear me, or if he was even awake. I wasn't sure what to do, so I started telling him some of my favourite memories. I talked about the time when I was eight and he visited me at summer camp and I was so glad to see him I wouldn't let go of his leg for fifteen minutes. I talked about the time when I was twenty and I forgot my birth control pills at their house, and when he mailed them to me he enclosed a beautiful letter. And then I talked about the time when I was in highschool and he took my mom out on a chilly November night to the Chateau Grill for their anniversary, and I was sitting cozily at home watching The Dukes of Hazzard until the phone rang, and it was him, saying he forgot his wallet, and could I bring it out to them. It was the forgotten wallet that made him laugh.

They were far too fleeting, all those "lasts."  And now I'm confronted by firsts. December will  be the first Christmas without him. And before that November will bring the first wedding anniversary my mom will have to celebrate alone. And six days ago on October 24th, it was his birthday; he would have turned 90.

I had strange dreams all last week leading up to it. In one I walked into a room and there was my dad, sitting at a table, talking to a couple of people. "But you can't be here," I said. "You're dead."  Since he was a figment of my imagination I expected him to disappear, but he didn't. He just kept talking to the two people, until eventually I woke up. Later, I was full of regret. Even if he was a figment, why did I try to make him disappear? I should have gone to him, hugged him, told him happy birthday at least.

  

It was Wednesday when I had that dream. Then Thursday came. And then Friday, his birthday. I felt like anything I did to mark it would feel unsatisfying. Because he's gone, and nothing can change that, not lighting a candle, or saying a toast, or writing a Facebook post. I went through my day as if it were ordinary, and at the end of it, as I went to bed, I picked up a book that's been at my bedside for months.

 

When I signed The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory out from the library, I wanted to occupy my brain with something that would make day to day life recede into insignificance. It's worked for the most part. Climate change and ISIS and even my dad's death are hard to keep in mind when I'm trying to get my head around why the fundamental building blocks of matter are supposed to be tiny wiggling rubber bands. Apparently one of the first things you need to understand is Einstein's theory of relativity, so on Friday night I read about that.

I used to think I had a handle on relativity: time slows down when you approach the speed of light. That's why in Planet of the Apes, when Charlton Heston comes back from his 18 month voyage he discovers an earth where two thousand years has passed. But beyond the potential for clever plot devices, I'd never thought about the implications. It turns out time slows down exponentially the faster you go, and ultimately when you reach the speed of light, time does not pass at all.What that means for photons, which travel constantly at the speed of light, is that time does not advance. The eight minutes it took for the sunlight in this picture to travel from the Sun to my Starbucks cup, from the photons' point of view, did not happen. Photons do not age, or get wrinkles, or celebrate birthdays.

On Friday night as I put down the book, I found this idea comforting. Perhaps the passage of time wasn't as inevitable as I thought.