When Everything is Past

I learned last Friday that a friend of mine, a mutual acquaintance really (i.e someone whom I know and who knows me and I have worked with and talked to even if briefly), who is only in his 40s, is dying from cirrhosis and that he has been told he only has four months to live.

This evening, I was reading Luhmann and his concept of time and the "present", that there are two presents, the chronological present (as measured by the clock, for example) and the lasting present. The chronological present is irreversible. It is a present that at some point, passes into the past. I think the concept of the lasting present is tricky but my own take on it is that it is the horizon of the present where one takes for granted that there is a future "present", that there will be a "present" later or tomorrow or next year or that one will still be present/ alive at some future time.

While reading this I remembered my friend and imagined that his temporal horizon must have changed. It must have gotten shorter, for one. It must have become a temporal horizon where four months is of supreme relevance (how many others give a horizon of four months any meaning?) It must have become a temporal horizon where chronological time has taken over and must appear to him now similar to an hourglass, slowly and visibly shifting sands.

I suppose for my friend, the concept of lasting present ceases to have meaning and more and more the present for him is defined as an increasing accumulation to the past and the past, especially given his situation of being in a hospital and not being allowed to see visitors, is increasingly becoming irreversible just as his future is now defined not by reversibility (of the past and present) and choice but irreversibility.

This is not to say that there is no lasting present after death. But the lasting present after death, even in Christian belief, cannot undo whatever happened in the lived past. As such, when everything is past (in the sense that there is no more present or future), the past becomes irreversible.

Maybe that is why people who know they are dying, if they can take hold of themselves, seek to use their time to engage in processes of healing and reversing because they are finally confronted with the prospect of impending definitive irreversibility.

Life is so fragile. I can only hope that this becomes an occasion of tremendous grace for my friend.