Time Present and Time Past

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

For months, we've been saying "she's waiting for the baby". And in a moment of cosmic grace, my sister-in-law delivered the baby boy on Tuesday morning at 11:16, and my mother died Wednesday morning at about 12:30. She waited for the baby, and the baby had the wherewithal to arrive about 10 days ahead of his due date.

Tuesday night was a long night, my sister and I sitting at either side of our mother's bed. I read to her, the whole of The Four Quartets. We told her the baby's name; we showed her his picture. We listened to the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto, to Glenn Gould playing The Goldberg Variations, and finally, to the beginning of Handel's Messiah, getting as far as the first chorus, the fugal "will be revealed".


And now begins and now ends - the circle of life, writ large.