Did you ever miss a place and time so bad that you could smell it, feel it on your skin, taste the air? For me, the time was when I was 23 and the place was Pock Wock Rd. It was summer and  I had only been married a year, I didn’t know the heartbreak of divorce yet. My Aunt Blanche wouldn’t die for another four years, her dementia was just starting to show. My Grandmother hadn’t died of cancer was still moving around and not bed ridden. My best friend didn’t have cancer yet. She wouldn’t die for another 11 years. The warm summer air caressed my skin as I sat on the front steps at my Aunt Blanche’s house. My cousin Carol and her kids lived in Halifax and I got to talk to her on the phone. Our family friend Jimmy Haverstock just lived up the road in the house handed down through generations, it would’t burn down for another 30 years. My Aunt Inez still lived across the road and I would see her outside working with her flowers. My cousins Danny and David were still living at home with her. I was also a part of the Casey family. My mother-in-law and father-in-law lived just two houses down the road. My husband Harry and I had a nice trailer in Timber Trails. He was in the volunteer fire department and we were always invited to barbecues. Life was full of friends and love and things to do! I would go to Cape Breton some weekends to hang out with my best friend. 

   For as long as I can remember, I have hated time. The saying goes, there’s good news and bad news: “Everything changes.” I have rarely experienced it as good news and time has stolen everything I ever loved, and replaced it with nothingness. How many people as they age, wonder where the good times went? How many mourn for the excitement they got to experience once and will never experience again? A first love; a first baby? My family are all gone now. The colours, and smells and places are all different. They lack. They lack vibrancy and flavour. My heart will never race with excitement again. It plods along, getting through each day. Attempting a steady beat of normalcy. 

   I had an 84 year old friend who said she missed firsts. I took her to a play in Charlottetown, PEI because she had never seen a play. It was the life of Johnny Cash. She enjoyed it, it was easy to see. But I saw a wistfulness in her eyes and knew she was missing her husband and wondering what he might have said about the play. How he would have enjoyed it. 

   I would give up any success I’ve had, any enjoyment I have had over the last years if I could go back and live in that year forever. Nothing is worth time stealing your loved ones and leaving you to wait for it to finally come for you. Waiting for it to release you from your loneliness and disappointment. Letting you wait and watch society turn into something foreign and ugly. Watching people change in ways you never imagined could happen. As you sit, and wait and long for a time and a place that no longer exists and will never exist again.