As I laid in bed, my feet protruded out of the bottom of my gown. I stared at them and my now hairless legs. My eyes moved to my arm with a needle stuck in, leading to IV tubes dripping liquids into my body. I closed them and stared into the blackness, fighting the pain and sickness as I thought about time, life, and death. It was only recently I even had to start to think about what comes next. I had no answers, and to be honest, I was terrified.
I opened my eyes and looked around the silent, dark room. Suddenly, a loud hissing startled me as smoke started to rise from the linoleum at the foot of my bed.
I grasped the sides of my bed and pulled myself up as a cloaked figure began forming out of the clouds. A long black robe shaped, followed by two arms, long hair and a long beard covering an old man’s wrinkled face. In one of his hands, he held a clock with no hands and the other pointed right at me.
“Your time is not up.” His voice boomed. I clutched my blanket, unable to speak.
“Your time is not up.”
“It… it’s not?” I croaked.
“No. Your time is not up. Because time is irrelevant… bro.”
As he stepped forward into the light and the smoke cleared, I was able to make out his full figure. He wore a worn wool sweater over a tie-dye Phish T-shirt and several beaded necklaces. His beard was matted with a few crumbs in it, and feathers dangled from his hat. He grabbed a chair nearby and slid it towards my bed. He spun it around, sat on it reverse-style, rested his arms on the back, and leaned forward.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Father… Time?”
“Close. I am his brother. Father Time is Irrelevant.”
He must have seen the confusion in my face.
“I’m Father Time’s chiller, younger brother. You know he’s always so serious, like-” He made air quotes. “You’re running out of time, go back into time, go forward in time. And like never explaining anything and I’m just like chill man, haven’t you heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Time is irrelevant.”
I lay silently, trying to make sense of this. He scooched his chair a few feet closer to me and rested his hand on my arm. He wore a few prayer bead necklaces and smelled like Nag Champa.
“Don’t you want to ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“What comes after all this? “What is time? What’s in the blackness? What happens when you die?
It was like he could read my mind.
“Well for starters, Einstein was right. That dude was a genius. Stephen Hawking? Another dude who just… got it. Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar? Spot on. Time is irrelevant because it doesn’t live on a linear timeline. There’s no past, present or future. It moves fast, it moves slow, it changes all the time. There’s like, infinite versions of you, but it’s our souls, man, they just transcend.”
He stared in the distance for several seconds.
I cleared my throat. “But I lived my life on a linear timeline, I don’t get it. I was young, now I got old and sick, and I’m going to die.”
“You’re not getting it because you’re not trying to open your mind, brometheus. Here, this will help.” He held out a lit joint to me.
I waved him off. “I don’t smoke marijuana and I’m in chemo and this is a hospital.”
“Might help.” He shrugged as he took a deep drag and blew it out.
“So what, we just transcend and then what, go to heaven? Is there a heaven? What about other religions?” He hadn’t answered my questions.
“Whoa, whoa, slow your roll, bromigo. That whole transcending of your soul? That’s what religion is, man. It’s light, togetherness and being part of the universe again. That’s all every religion is trying to explain. Like, check it, I had a friend who was crossing the street one day, and boom, a car comes out of nowhere and hits him. Before the paramedics got there, he was dead for, like, seven seconds. In those seven seconds, he said all he felt was just peace, and light and love, man. And that’s what it’s all about, broseidon.”
He took one last drag of his joint and wiped a few ashes off his beard.
“So, you’ve got nothing to worry about, bronana. You’ll go when it’s your time, and until then, don’t even worry about it, because you can’t understand it anyway.”
He stood up and turned to leave.
“Wait!” I yelled. “You said I’ll go when it’s my time. I’m in so much pain, is it going to be soon?”
“No. You’ll get through this and have many more years with your family. But for the pain? Try this.”
He held out the joint again, gesturing me to take it.
I shook my head. “No, I told you I don’t smoke marijuana. I’m against it.”
He dashed over to my bed, grabbed my face, and looked me dead in the eyes.
“Brominator, you’ve spent years destroying your body with cigarettes and alcohol and you’re worried about weed? This stuff doesn’t kill you man, there’s no side effects, and it could make you feel a lot better. Tell you what, how about I just leave this here.”
He pulled out another joint and set it next to my bed with a lighter.
“You decide if you want it or not, but it comes with the backing of many doctors and researchers, years of people using it to treat pain and, of course, my personal recommendation. But unfortunately, I have to go. Even though time is irrelevant, drum circles wait for no one. Later Nancy Pebrosi!”
He left in a puff of smoke and the room was silent again. After several minutes of thought, I decided he was right. I picked up the joint and took a hit. Shortly after, my pain lessened, and with a smile on my face, I fell asleep pondering the mysteries of the universe.
Maybe that dirty hippy was on to something.