Welcome to the ward – Day I

My first morning on the orthopaedic ward merely served to reaffirm my initial post-anaesthesia observation that I was now in hell. I’d finally got into some semblance of a comfortable position after a night of pain not even the analgesic properties of morphine was able to dampen for too long, only to be woken by a nurse insisting I needed to wake up. ‘What time is it?’ I hoarsely croaked in a voice you only truly get smoking forty Capstan a day. ‘It’s six in the morning’ came the less than breezy reply. ‘I need to get you washed before ward round’. To this day I still don’t understand the rationale behind this archaic throwback to Nightingale’s Crimean crusade – all the patients neatly lined up in their beds with freshly scrubbed, thankful faces and the pungent smell of carbolic soap conveniently masking the underlying odour of death and disease. Less than sixty seconds later I’d irrevocably marked my cards for the rest of my stay as I replied in my newly acquired Capstan voice ‘I’m a big lad. I’ll wash myself at a time that suits me, not matron or anyone else for that matter’. I immediately regretted what I’d said as I wasn’t sure if it was only Carry on films that still had matrons in them. Gauched out on Afghanistan’s most lucrative export I might have been, but I didn’t imagine the look on her face.  Behind the professional facade I saw her eye’s tighten up and give me a look not dissimilar to the one Annie Wilkes gives Paul Sheldon in Stephen King’s seminal work ‘Misery’.  It said ‘You are in my world now. My rules – and you are going to abide by them’. What actually came out of her mouth in an edgy voice now an octave lower was ‘You aren’t in a fit state to do much at the moment, and a quick wash will freshen you up a bit’. Accompanied by the same steely smile air hostesses give their most exasperating passengers I knew I’d just made the ward shit list in what must have been NHS record time.

With my face now freshly scrubbed, but minus the thankful look beloved by Nightingale, and with nurse Wilkes striding up to the next unwashed, ungrateful soul, I glanced down at the sheet covered mound of throbbing pain at the foot of my bed. The first of what would be many conversations in my head started up. ‘You don’t want to see what’s under there Paul’ said my slightly whiny, tremulous morphine-fueled inner voice, ‘the only thing you’re going to find is your shattered career’. ‘Possibly’, I  mentally retorted, ‘but I’m still going to see’.

With a degree of trepidation I drew back the light cotton sheet that covered some kind of surgical cradle that both kept the bedclothes off the injuries and left my ankles supported in two suspended compartments. As they still had a considerable amount of swelling left to do both of them had been left in what were called backslabs. Essentially half a cast leaving the front of the limb free, full casts would only be created once the inflammation had been significantly reduced. Odd, I thought as the sheet fell fully back to reveal a pair of legs shaved from the knees down, I don’t remember them being this colour.

I rarely have regrets. I tend to move on after an event and put it down to experience – with the caveat that to constantly repeat things that bring you pain and unhappiness is foolishness. I do however regret not taking some pictures of my ankles as they cycled through the myriad blues, purples, yellows and blacks that combined to create a rainbow of bruising like some mad artists palette. Day one after my operation and I was already looking down at a pair of Van Gogh masterpieces in not so subtle, slightly stomach churning pastels adorning swollen, stretched and angry looking ankles three times their normal size. On both sides of each ankle – thankfully now pointing the right way from their 60 degree post-fall deviation – were six or seven inch strips of adhesive tape covering what I surmised must be the insertion points for the metalwork. I’d seen enough for one day and quickly pulled the covers back over the frame and sank back exhausted by just this little effort. ‘Told you so’ my unwelcome inner voice pointedly whispered. ‘Piss off’ I whispered back as thoughts tumbled randomly around my head like a lone pair of socks in a madly spinning washing machine.

The rest of the day was spent in a vortex of pain, morphine, visits from medical staff and a poorly briefed liaison officer I’d never met from the army. The ward was busy, full of patients in varying degrees of incapacity and their visitors coming and going. All I longed for was a bit of peace and quiet – a Turner’s Bridge of Sighs, or a Constable’s Haywain of a day. Instead, influenced in no small degree by a combo of opiates, pain and post-operative reaction to anaesthesia I ended up enduring Dali, Munch and Picasso all competing to out do each other in the gallery of my mind. It had been a long day.

Welcome to the ward…

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall…

Confucius

‘Is this hell?’ was my first groggy, but not particularly surprised thought as I came around from the anaesthetic. After all, hell is where I’d convinced myself I’d end up sooner rather than later. I tried raising my uncooperative, lethargic eyelids for a better view of the other damned, suffering souls but they refused to open more than a crack before they slowly closed again like heavy curtains briefly blown open by a light breeze. Considering I was now in hell for the rest of eternity I drifted back into an oddly calm, deep and dreamless sleep.

The operation, according to the less than animated, weary looking junior doctor who thoughtfully woke me later that afternoon had ‘Gone as well as could have been expected’. Too tired to be troubled by this perfunctorily delivered hospital cliche I promptly fell asleep again. Following my earlier climbing faux pas I’d been helicoptered off the cliffs at Swanage and quickly transferred to a waiting ambulance at Sandbanks which whisked me in a frenzy of noise and blue lights to nearby Poole general. As luck would have it two orthopaedic consultants attending a presentation were already scrubbed up with surgical tools glinting in their skilled hands after an update from the helicopter crew. In less than an hour I’d gone from an 80 foot freefall and subsequent cliff rescue to operating theatre. Several hours later and with enough Meccano in my lower limbs to deny several children their christmas presents that year I was wheeled out into the frenetic ward that was to become my reluctant home for some time.

Later that evening I was awake enough to take in both my surroundings and my situation. One of the two consultants involved in my operation came and sat by my bed. A tall, well built, softly spoken man who looked like a rugby player but sounded like a priest taking confession. He introduced himself and gave me his carefully worded prognosis. My ankles hadn’t just been broken – they had shattered. Over nine breaks in my left lower leg and ankle and close to twelve in the right were now all held together by a network of screws and metal plates that would forever damn me as I went through airport security. The random thought ‘But will I ever dance swan lake again’ crazily entered my head and nearly made it out into the open until he tentatively told me ‘Walking may become difficult for you. These are life-changing injuries and you have some tough times ahead’. A thousand questions exploded in my head like fireworks seeing in the New year. What about running? Climbing? Taekwondo? My list of things I still wanted to do, like my sudden despair, seemed endless. Before I could let my torrent of heuristics out his bleep went off and with something akin to relief he made his excuses and strode off. There would be no time in the surgical confessional for me this evening. Overwhelmed by a spring tide of thoughts and the surge of morphine I’d recently had I turned my head to the wall and quietly cried myself to the pale imitation of sleep I’d come to know too well during my stay in hospital.

To be continued…

Eye of the storm…

Ever had a moment in your life when you’ve had to draw on every fragment of your life experiences whilst much of what you considered superfluous learning coalesces to become a font of much needed knowledge? I’ve had a couple. One went very badly wrong – a story for another day perhaps – and the other went like this:

Four o’clock on a freezing cold and foggy 6th of December morning in 1996 and I’d just been startled out of what had become a fragmented and tortuous night’s sleep by my heavily pregnant partner.  ’The baby is coming’ she said – fairly matter of factly all things considered. Galvanised by her words, and with sleep an already distant memory I grabbed the packed overnight bag, threw on some clothes and helped her slowly to her feet. Together we made our unsteady way to my car outside the flat we were living in at the time. To the casual observer not in the know we would have probably looked like two people leaving a particularly late party after one sherry too many. By the time we’d reached the communal door it was becoming obvious we were never going to make the hospital. Almost bent double my partner was moaning in pain and clutching her stomach barely able to walk. We somehow staggered outside and I got her into the passenger seat of my car – a not so voluminous peugeot 205. Sporty, nice leather seats and with the inimitable styling of Roland Garros but possibly not designed with imminent childbirth in mind. As she sank on to what was to become our birthing chair she suddenly cried out ‘It’s coming out, I can feel the head’. I remember the moment exactly. Time stood still like a frozen waterall and my senses went into overdrive. I could feel the moisture from the light mist on my face like a thin sheen of sweat. The orangey glow from nearby street lamps bathed us both in an eerie glow making our features barely discernible. Flight or fight. I knew both of them intimately, like old friends who’d popped around on the off chance of catching up with the latest news. I looked at the flats thinking someone must have heard the noise we’d been making. There was nothing. No slightly moving curtain revealing a disheveled , slightly irritated neighbour. No single welcoming light bulb being flicked on like a beacon of hope in the stygian darkness. Nothing. Just a blank, black facade. We were on our own.

I felt myself physically snap back into the here and now. It’s happened before in combat situations. The huge dump of adrenaline you’ve just had delivered like a long expected, much anticipated parcel surged through my veins and I turned to see my partner pushing the seat back the whole seven inches extra it gave you for leg room. I entered the eye of the storm.

I’d left the army two year earlier and made a decision to become a mental health nurse for too many reasons to pick at in this particular story. The first 18 months of the degree were called the Common Foundation Path or CFP – the NHS loves it’s acronym’s more than the military. The purpose of the CFP was to give everyone a three month secondment to the other nursing disciplines out there in an attempt to support practitioners to become acquainted with the concept of holistic care – the buzz words of the degree. I’d been given a maternity placement early on in the semester which I’d oddly enjoyed. I was present at a number of births, enjoyed the company of the slightly politically incorrect midwives and felt immensely privileged to have been invited into what is still a huge, intensely personal event for most people. I listened, learnt and did as much as my remit as a student nurse allowed me as that’s the kind of guy I am.

Reaching down I felt the crown of the babies head. My partner was doing her best to breathe correctly, the cold air forming plumes of smoky vapour from her mouth as she panted. She looked pale and blue even under the faint sickly yellow of the street lamps that were my only source of light. Cradling the now partly emerged head I asked her to breathe and then bear down when it felt right to her. Several breaths later I was able to ease the head totally free. As she took a rest before what I hoped was the final big push I realised the umbilical cord was around the babies neck. Intensely searching for more detail in the gloom I became aware there was very little movement and no sound from this tiny scrap of humanity who’s life was now in my hands. I forced myself to recall what I’d learnt on the maternity ward and managed to free the cord after what seemed like minutes of fumbling with fingers that refused to work properly. With the release of the cord I was able to deliver our baby into the world. For the briefest of moments I thought I’d got it all wrong and had been too late. Still, pale and making no sound I reached for a pulse and gently tried to rouse my newly born third child whilst I ran through child resuscitation in my head ready for what looked like an inevitable next stage.

Suddenly there was a cry followed by more cries and movement. I looked with tears at a pair of tired, tiny eyes that briefly looked back at me as if to say ‘You took your time’ before they closed again. It was going to be okay. I quickly wrapped both of them in clothes from the bag, closed the car door and dashed back into the flats where an amazed neighbour called for an ambulance. Waves of tiredness, elation, fear and joy rolled towards me like surf on a beach and I gratefully let myself be carried away from the calm, measured place I’d been in for the last ten minutes.

The ambulance duly arrived and the paramedic, after a brief but thorough assessment of mother and baby, congratulated me on the arrival of my son. Confused I looked at him before realising I’d never registered what sex our baby was during the delivery. I smiled back at him as he grinned and shook my hand ‘Nice job mate, well done’.

There you have it. A son. Two more awesome sons have arrived since making it a nice round number of five children in total. I love them all equally as you should, but there is a connection between my firstborn son and I that’s hard to define, and harder still to quantify -but it’s there in my heart, and I look at him as he grows into an adult still with a sense of pride and wonderment at just how he and I came to meet in the eye of a storm…

Time with my Dad…

1977, I’d just turned seventeen and couldn’t wait to leave home. I was on sprinters blocks poised for the starting gun that was my army papers being accepted. You have to understand there was nothing wrong with home. Mum, Dad, me and my sister. Perfectly normal family living on the edges of the lake district in a relatively sylvanian setting. So why the hurry to leave? To this day I’m not sure. I have no childhood memories up until around ten or eleven – nothing dreadful happened that any of us know about; No dark, unspoken secrets hidden away like faintly damp, uncared for books smelling of mildew in a tatty escroitoire covered in a dust sheet up in the attic. I’m faithfully promised by my sister and mum I had the same combo of halycon, carefree days looking for minnows in streams and rain-sodden long faced trudges to school most children have, but I really could not wait another minute. Looking back I must have caused untold worry and stress for my parents. I would often be away for months at a time, incommunicado for weeks only to turn up on the doorstep with a rucsac full of washing, and the occasional memento from wherever I’d been. Going home was tricky. Their norms and values very quickly became the antithesis of mine. My experiences as a soldier rapidly changed my mindset and I felt stifled, bored and unable to relate to much of what home was about. The next few years would see me visit less and less.

I don’t remember much up to eleven and left home for the army at seventeen so I should have six or so years of memories of my dad? I struggle to accurately recall a quiet, hard working man who, between him and my mum got the family out of the council estate we lived in and into the rather nice semi overlooking the fells of Furness. A fit, healthy non-smoker who might have had a pint once a month he was instrumental in my joining the school fell walking club where I fell in love with the mountains, lakes and streams that now play such a big part in my adult life. We fell out. Of course we did, but it usually wasn’t for long as he was a placid kind of guy who somehow stayed calm with me despite my troubled adolescent whining. He respected my decision to join the army – something my mum said I’d wanted to do since I was six or seven (I wish I could remember this stuff) – and he was there for me on the bad days. Days when I lost good friends. Days when I should have joined my ever increasing circle of deceased comrades. He listened to me weeping down the phone on more than one occasion and heard me loud and clear on the days when I had successes – when I’d beaten the odds or passed some particularly ball-breaking course.

Fast forward to 1993. I was in the process of leaving the army after too many injuries and ongoing problems with my ankles previously shattered in a climbing accident. I had, after all, done what I’d wanted to do. The world was changing, as was I and I sensed now was a good time to say goodbye before my luck ran totally out. A further incentive was the scaling down of the forces and a request for candidates considering voluntary redundancy. The combination of physical and mental toil and the prospect of some hard cash and a pension proved too tempting and I volunteered to jump ship four years earlier than my contract stated. With less than six months to go before I left I started making plans. By now I had a greater appreciation of home and the peace it could offer me. My relationship with my parents had also improved and I was now the proud father of Ceridwen – the future looked okay. Doable.

I had a lot of leave to use up before I left and so Ceri and I headed up to the lakes to spend some time with my parents. Dad had suffered a stroke two years earlier at the grand old age of 57 and I was acutely aware I’d not been to see him as much as I should. I conveniently used my military career as an excuse for my busyness but knew in my heart part of me hated seeing this once fit, mentally alert man looking so frail. We’d been home for three days and it felt good. Ceri loved her grandad and they got on well together – more guilt in my heart as I realised how much more I could have done to meet up and return at least some of the support he’d selflessly given to me over the years.

You don’t forget some days: You know where you were, who you were with and what you were doing; The twin towers; Princess Diana’s car crash – you can take yourself right back to that day as if it was yesterday. Ceri and I returned from a trip out together to find an ambulance outside the house and dad being wheeled into it. Barely conscious he looked across at me and smiled the lopsided smile the stroke had thoughtfully given him. I put my thumb up, fought with all my might to appear calm and said ‘The things you do to get out of housework dad’. He smiled the last smile I’d ever see before disappearing into the ambulance. Mum quickly came out of the house and said he’d become unwell and needed to be taken to Kendal urgently. The rest of the day became a blur. I vaguely remember the journey to the hospital and eventually being told by a doctor that my once healthy, agile and athletic dad had suffered a second catastrophic stroke from which he would never recover. By now the family was together at his bedside. I sat next to him and held his hand telling him how much we all loved him. To my amazement he squeezed my hand as an acknowledgement he’d heard me. There were many such moments over the next four long days and nights. I remember staring at his face for hours willing myself to memorise every line in it. I lived on regret, grief, rage and anger hardly sleeping or eating as I tried to capture every elusive moment with him. Exhausted, and against all of my protests I was sent home to get some rest on the fourth night. After a tortuous, haunted and disturbed night of fragmented sleep I awoke with a start knowing I had to get back to the hospital that minute. As I arrived on the ward I could see my mum and sister in the visitors room being comforted by a nurse – all three had tears in their eyes and I knew he’d gone without them having to say a word – I’d missed his passing by ten minutes. I went up to his bed and sat with him as the tears rolled down my eyes and asked him to forgive me for all that I had put him through during my years as a soldier. I told him how sorry I was not to have been around much and how I’d come to regret it, and that I hoped he had been proud of his soldier son and all that he’d achieved. I remember that day. It was my twin towers day. He’d not looked so peaceful and out of pain for a long time, and I’d not experienced pain like this in my entire life.

For many years afterwards I beat myself up about not being around as he died. It ate away at me giving me no peace and only served to reinforce my regrets at not seeing him much when he was alive. I found the Buddha and the Dharma (or they found me) which helped a lot, and one day a good friend lent me The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I remember devouring the words and thumbing through the pages with a soaring heart:

Children.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Death.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

I no longer regret not having enough time with my dad before he died. He never really went away. He’s in the rivers and mountains of my birthplace and in the smiles of my children and sister, and I can have as much time with him as I want…

Crossing the Rubicon…

Day three. I surprise myself with my tenacity. I’m not at the stage where I’m thinking ‘What can I drone on about tomorrow’ and although I can see how you reach that destination I’m still a couple of fields away from it.

So. What’s a Rubicon? Legend has it Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon river contrary to the laws in place at that time – an act of insurrection making armed conflict inevitable. He then proceeded to march on to Rome in the full knowledge both he and his men were in violation of the law and faced certain death unless they could overthrow the senate. The rest, as they say, is history. The modern equivalent is ‘the point of no return’. That sometimes painful place where you know your bridges are nothing but smoldering ashes and the only way is forward away from the acrid smell of smoke.

Rewind if you will back to the 26th October 1988 and the Jurassic coast of Dorset. I was 28 and probably the fittest I’ve ever been. One of the senior physical training instructors in an army gym and a specialist in adventurous training. If I wasn’t climbing cliffs I was abseiling down them, or windsurfing or kayaking – the list was endless, as was my ego. If it had risk or physical exertion involved I’d give it a go. I’d promised another instructor I’d go climbing with him as he wanted to improve his technique. The pair of us duly arrived at some sea cliffs near Swanage, unpacked the gear and looked for an appropriate route up. Once decided he took control of the rope at the bottom of the climb, whilst I started to climb and began placing the various bits of metalwork needed to stop me plunging to my death into the cracks and crevices before passing the rope through the carabiners. At the final stage of the climb it began to rain making the rock slippy and difficult to hold on to. Looking back down at the tiny figure of my climbing partner I was left with every climbers quintessential watershed moment – do I descend or continue the ascent and try and get to the top. By now the rain was pouring down and climbing down ruled itself out. Decision made I reached for the penultimate hold (paradoxically the hardest part of the climb) and began to lift myself up to what was a decent sized ledge. Suddenly my foot slipped away and I lost what little grip I had. What had been a relatively graceful, somewhat balletic balancing act quickly became a grotesque parody as I struggled to maintain equilibrium. The next 30 seconds or so are fairly blurred but I’m reliably informed by my climbing buddy that I slipped off the rock and began what was to become a 80 foot sheer descent. The various bits of protection in the rock my rope was attached to rather unhelpfully ripped out one by one, and in a short space of time later I landed where I’d set off from. My first thought was ‘That wasn’t so bad at least I can stand up’.  My one defining memory of the day was of me trying to get to my feet and being confused why my legs weren’t working properly. A quick look down at my ankles showed both of them were pointing 90 or so degrees in the wrong directions.  It was at this point my thoughts became confused; Was I dead? Am I paralysed? Who will pick up the car? Am I going to be late for dinner? all whirled around my head. I fought an intense feeling of wanting to go to sleep and tried to ignore the huge waves of pain starting to engulf my entire body. I began to go into shock and looked around me wondering if this is how it all ends – stretched out in a groovy pair of climbing pants at the foot of some cliffs in Dorset. It wasn’t what I’d envisaged as my final resting place, but there was an oblique kind of synchronicity with my lifestyle and the risks I’d gladly taken in the past as I tried to score more and more adrenaline. I remember the helicopter arriving and being put on an external stretcher as there was no room inside this particular mechanical angel of mercy. As we took off I was able to look back at the scene which gradually became smaller as we gained height. ‘I’m definitely dying’ was my last thought as I was taken heavenwards and drifted into unconsciousness…

A few ops and a lot of metalwork later I found myself staring at two shattered ankles and some minor breaks to both lower legs. My stay in hospital was physically and mentally traumatic – both for me and the medical team who had to endure my tantrums, self-pity and incessant demands for physio. Visits from friends and other members of the team in the gym with thoughtful gifts like skateboards, ballet shoes and books on basic rock climbing skills helped to break up the interminable grind of hospital life. The already overpowering motivation to get back to full fitness was given a welcome boost when I overheard the doctor saying I would never walk properly again. Months later I’d worn out the medics to the point they cheerfully discharged me after providing me with two specially built casts made from fibre glass. In less than a year I began climbing again…

Why the analogy of a Rubicon? I had two to cross. The first, most obvious one was I had to make a call on the climb to either turn back or move on. For me there was no right or wrong decision. I made the choice to continue, suffered life changing injuries and yet I have no regrets. Two weeks later at the same climb but at a much lower height a climber died after a head injury following a similar fall. My second, considerably more profound point of no return came during the endless round of rehab, physio, more operations and the huge frustrations I experienced going from this super-fit, rather egocentric soldier to the guy who needed a nurse to bring him the commode because he could no longer walk. I learnt more about myself in this period of enforced inactivity than at any other time in my life and came out of a very dark place back into the light with a more rounded view of both the world and the people in it.

Falling off a cliff and nearly dying probably saved my life, and once you’ve discovered your humanity and how it can help both yourself and the people around you – there’s no going back…

Making a difference…

Day two of blogging. What if my muse deserts me? Do I just sit here and stare at the flashing cursor balefully blinking at me as it becomes irritated at my lack of prose? Or do I prevaricate. Make a cup of tea. Polish some shoes. Remove the limescale from the taps. The list of things to do other than write a blog are endless; Some are necessary but the vast majority are superfluous and only called upon when you have an assignment or homework to complete. I have made a commitment to give this a go. It helps gets my thoughts in order and provides structure to my day – especially today as it looks like the dog days of summer have been rounded up and are now en route back to the Battersea home for strays.

I was once asked if I had made a positive difference to anything or anybody as a career soldier for nearly 18 years. My immediate, fairly defensive response was of course I had. How could I not have after all the butt-kicking chaos and mayhem you get involved in as a soldier over that amount of time. Finding an example was a bit harder and left me searching for some evidence that I personally had made a jot of difference. What eventually came to mind was a story told to me by my teacher at the Buddhist temple close to my mum’s up in the lake district. It goes like this:

A businessman is staying at one of the top hotels along the coast of some relatively tropical country. Exhausted by the daily grind of seminars and trying to broker deals he decides to go to bed early and try and catch up on lost sleep. During the night he’s woken by a huge tropical storm but manages to drop off only to wake up as the dawn light starts to appear on the horizon. On looking out of his window he was amazed to see several palm trees had been blown over and on the beach what looked liked small dark patches had almost covered what less than twelve hours earlier had been pristine silvery-white sand. Intrigued he went down into the stillness of the early morning light and walked the short distance to the beach. As he got closer he realised the dark patches were starfish that had been washed up and were now lying beached in their hundreds, if not thousands along the length of the sand. Further away in the distance the businessman saw a woman who was carefully picking up the starfish one by one and placing them back in the water. Feeling slightly irritated by what he saw as a complete waste of time he strolled purposefully up to her and said ‘What’s the point of putting them back into the water? There are thousands of them, most of which are going to die when the sun reaches the beach. You aren’t making any difference at all’. The lady looks up at him, gently smiles and turns to pick up another starfish before once again putting it slowly into the sea.

Turning back to him she said ‘There. Made a difference to that one didn’t I?’

And there we have it. We are all capable of making a difference. It’s not always on a grand scale, and much of the time, like ripples in a large pond, we sometimes don’t get to see the difference we’ve made. I’m fairly confident the so called Arab Spring and the massive changes being wrought throughout the far east were started by just one person having an idea – and a certainty that he or she could make a difference. As for me. I’m quietly optimistic that someone, somewhere is benefiting from my efforts. If not as a blogger, then at least as a soldier…

To blog or not to blog, that is my question…

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Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori. There. A classical way to start one’s blog. What does it mean? It means lots of things on many different levels. Loosely translated into english it’s close enough to ‘Time flies, remember your mortality’ to not … Continue reading →