Time. The Quiet Companion.

A little over a month ago, I lost my four-legged companion.

Rigby’s heart gave out, and his absence broke a little piece of mine at the same time. The house seems emptier now. Daily walks feel more like exercise than a chance to explore the neighborhood with my canine best friend. And pulling out the keyboard to write feels, up until today, more like a chore than a joy.

But this isn’t really a post about losing a dog.

I understand grief, at least intellectually. I know it belongs to no one person and that, eventually, its sharpest edges will soften. But what surprised me was that I thought grief would make me think about death.

Instead, it made me think about time.

Rigby’s death didn’t simply remove his presence from my life. It changed how I saw the years of walks, daily routines, and ordinary moments I didn’t realize would someday feel so special. It took an empty leash for me to realize another companion had been walking beside me in silence for as long as I could remember.

Time.

It turns out that time has been by my side for my entire life.

It was just a lot quieter than Rigby.

It was there during childhood summers spent at camp and running around with the neighborhood kids in days that seemed endless.

It stayed with me through the busy, rewarding years of raising my boys, when I believed another sports season, another school event, or another graduation would always be on the horizon.

It accompanied me through a career measured in quarters, deadlines, sales goals, and promotions.

And it was there for all the daily rituals of life with a dog. A life that felt permanent until it wasn’t.

I think I noticed time only when something changed.

But this constant companion rarely calls attention to itself. It simply sits beside us, quietly turning today into yesterday.

Time also seems to change speed with the seasons of our lives.

As children, it never moves fast enough. Are we there yet? Why can’t it be my birthday now? How many more days until Christmas?

During our working years, time is scarce. Life turns into a series of schedules, meetings, deadlines, and obligations. We try to balance work demands with the people and experiences waiting outside our working hours.

As parents, the early days and never-ending nights can seem impossibly long. Then, almost without warning, the years accelerate. We stand in the driveway and watch our children pull away toward lives of their own.

In retirement, we convince ourselves that time is finally under our control. The calendar clears. We put the alarm clock in the drawer. For the first time in decades, many of our hours seem to belong solely to us. But that quiet companion remains, reminding us of an uncomfortable truth. We may have more freedom in how we use our time, but we don’t have an unlimited supply.

Perhaps time’s most convincing accomplice is the word “later.”

I’ll call them later.

We’ll take that trip someday.

I’ll slow down when things settle.

There will be another summer at the lake.

We’ll take a longer walk tomorrow.

One of my favorite poems is The Station by Robert Hastings. It describes how we spend so much of our lives looking ahead, convinced fulfillment is waiting at some future stop. We restlessly pace the aisles, waiting for the train to reach the station where our lives will finally feel complete.

But the station keeps moving farther down the tracks.

Too often, we hand the good things in our lives over to “later,” assuming there will always be another opportunity to retrieve them. The truth is that fulfillment isn’t waiting for us at the end of the line. Much of it is already sitting beside us as the train rolls along.

Of course, no one can treat every moment as precious. Life would be exhausting if we tried. The trash still needs to be taken out. The lawn still needs cutting. There are appointments to keep and chores to finish.

But perhaps we can become a little better at recognizing some moments while they are still happening.

A wise counselor, more like a knowledgeable friend with good listening skills, recently told me that I need to learn the difference between “want” and “should.” That’s not easy for someone who has spent most of his life measuring days by what he accomplished.

I’m good at “should,” which always keeps me searching for the next productive use of an hour. It tells me I should write something, fix something, organize something, or cross one more item off the list.

Not so much with “want,” which gives me permission to stop justifying the hour and simply sit with it.

If I am ever going to cast off my need to feel constantly productive in retirement, I need to recognize when it is okay to pause and enjoy the moment without asking anything more of it.

So, I sit here on my dock writing these words. I am watching the fall colors gather around the lake. I don’t need to accomplish anything else right now. I don’t need to make this hour more productive than it already is.

Maybe, just maybe, I am getting a little better at sitting in the moment.

Yes, time, my quiet and faithful companion, is here beside me.

And I still miss Rigby. But I have the memories.

And I have this moment.

For now, that’s enough.

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I write about retirement, family, purpose, career, and the things we sometimes don't notice until life slows down enough to see them. Subscribe to The Sunny Side of 57, and I'll send new posts directly to your inbox, typically one to two times each month.