One of the greatest influences in my life, the late Pamana Tuhon Christopher Sayoc, Sr. said that, “since we can never get it back, time is our most precious commodity.” Of all the things in our worlds, money, comfort, recognition, status, are all things we can get them back. It might be difficult, or may take a long time. It may even feel impossible, but we can regain them. Even our health. But time is something we can never get back. In our world, time only moves forward. My teacher, Guro Inosanto has said that Bruce Lee’s greatest fear was getting old. All of us, whether we recognize it or not, are subject to the crushing inevitability of the arrow of time. Of age. Of the fleeting present, and the flowing past.

Pamana Tuhon would go on and urge us, that since we can never get time back, since it is our most precious commodity, then we should not waste it. Like anything precious in our lives, we should be careful stewards of it, nurturing caretakers of it. We should not let it go to waste, we should not give it away. Least of all, we should not give it away to people we do not want to spend it with. Like anything precious, we should spend it on, and with, people who are important to us. People we love.

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman reveals that most of us make future plans influenced by the memories we expect to take from them. Vacations and trips, all carefully plotted out and documented with amazing backdrops, delicious foods, smiling faces. This magnificent atemporality, our ability to plant and author our pasts by directing our futures is an amazing gift unique to our humanity. If we are careful, we if are intentional, if we are nurturing and thoughtful, we can fill our lives with meaning that we know we will never get back. But we can visit.

After William was born, from the very first day, I took countless pictures on our new digital camera, and hours and hours of video on our camcorder, a wedding gift. I would save the tapes as video files, then burn to DVD’s that we sent to our families, thousands of miles away. We were so proud to share his life with them, long before FaceTime and Zoom. We were also scared, that the little time we had, the little documented bits of his life, would be our only. Our last. The dark days in the NICU turned to excruciating weeks, then marathon months. And after 17 weeks, he went home, only to stop breathing two weeks later and start another months long journey in and out of the hospital.

Our pictures and videos started to change. PICU rooms and oxygen tubing on William’s face became balanced with parks and beaches. The world was open. Hopeful. We made new memories. We filled them with William in Santa hats, in an Easter basket with bunny ears. With costumes for Halloween, on trips to the Empire State Building, Magic Kingdom, and even Lourdes in France. The chandeliered mosaic of our family became illuminated with sparkling twinkles, soft glow, and iridescent brilliance. William was joined by a brother, then a sister. We moved houses, moved coasts. Bought our first house. Our videos were no longer simply his little face inside an incubator, they were epic motion pictures of William wearing suits, attending fancy events, travelling the world. Even if the world was a orange, sunset lit walk outside. Or, if the whole world was just sitting on our couch, recording silly faces and filters of William with long hair, a mustache, or whatever was on Snapchat. What once felt like a fear filled attempt to capture fleeting moments of life, became a joyous tribute to all of our life’s nooks and crannies, the deepest canyons and majestic heights.

I’ve come to realize and appreciate so much, that we can visit William not just in pictures and video files. We can visit him in places, once and still filled with his presence. I hear his voice (snorts) coming from his room. I feel his soft cool skin as we walked on the panhandle last night. And even more precious, I see his face when we are surrounded by family. In their faces. I smell his hair in his siblings hair. I meet his gaze and mischievous smile when I hear Mamom’s stories about him, even her trip to the principal’s office when I accidentally sent a “huge knife” with him to school on his wheelchair. I don’t just visit him in the past, confined to memory. I visit with him in the present. He visits us in our stories, in our laughter, in our hugs, and though painful, in our shared tears.

William lives in us and through us. He speaks through our stories, from the past and projected into the future. I told Pamana Tuhon before he passed away, that his teachings were one of the main reasons we decided to move back to Maryland. We wanted to make sure that our kids’ childhood memories were filled with vibrant family. Close. Young. Full of life. Jennifer and I wanted to plant sweet seeds that would grow into beautiful fruit, ripe with nostalgia and memory. What I appreciate now, is that it wasn’t us that did that for them, it is them that continue to do it for us. It is William that has filled my life with hilarious adventure, with a depth of peace and calm I’ve never known before, with a lens of gratitude that has made everything I see, in loving brilliance.

I don’t just hear an echo of William’s sounds in my memory. I hear him speaking with a wisdom outside of time. To be a careful steward, a curator of our lives. To spend it with people we want to spend it with, because that is where he is still with us. With people we love.

I love you so much, my handsome.