The cool air makes me uneasy. The white walls are sterile except for the two posters that hang; they do nothing to please the eye. Drawings of the human anatomy remind me of biology class. Across from me is a clock. I’ve been sitting in this room for exactly thirteen minutes now, waiting, wondering, and anxiously anticipating the result, and still no Doctor. I exhausted scanning my phone in the last waiting room. My mind begins to churn as the ticking overbears the silence. I watch with intense focus as time is getting away.

I wonder what goes through a mind when the person in that white coat tells you the days you have left in this world are numbered. How do you respond? How do you spend the time you have left? How do you reason with a limit? And then there was my mother, no one told her she didn’t have time left, she just packed up her time and left.

Time ran out suddenly, unexpectedly. I know she didn’t get to fulfill all her dreams. She left this world, and there was no coming back. Who knew her next 50 or so birthdays were not promised? She didn’t get to live the best years of her life. She left a mark on me. She was the one who taught me that the future will always be uncertain, because tomorrow was never promised to anyone.

I watched the daunting passage of time as the clock continued ticking, and in that silence I resonated with the most valuable thing I own…time. Tomorrow is an illusion. We live as if tomorrow is guaranteed. We plan and save, and then we gamble with time. I gave up on planning, foreseeing, and predicting because storms came without a signal. They just washed away everything that was meant to be. You never know when your world turns upside down, and it can happen in an instant. There is no certainty that life will be just as you dream.

The only infinite thing is time. Yet time won’t stand still for you. Slowly, I began to fulfill dreams because I saw how time played games with me. It drifts, and just like that, I surpassed the years my mother left behind. I have maybe 25 birthdays left, 25 Christmases, if I’m lucky. But that’s the thing, we think we have that time. The only certain thing is this moment in time. It has more value than we acknowledge because it can never be replaced. That is how she left a mark on me, my mother. I’m still fortunate, more fortunate than she was.

You can spend your time any way you want, but you can’t get it back once it’s gone. The same as once words are said, you can’t take them back. You can make time for things; it’s yours to spend however you wish. To say that you have no time is ignorance, because we all make time for what is important to us. Some of us compare our time with money, but the most valuable thing you can give someone is your time, and yet it’s the one thing we don’t have enough of.

It was my mother who taught me to live, to look beyond the boundaries of the time capsule, to resist the constraint of time, and to appreciate the time I have. To tell the people I care about how much I value them. To look after myself. Stay young even when you’re old and gray. Stay grounded even when the storms come. Love and be loved. Value your time more than things because when your time runs out, it won’t care if you’re rich or poor, sick or healthy, old and gray, or if you’re young and beautiful, it’ll just run out. Forever doesn’t exist, like the sand that passes through the hourglass; time won’t wait for you.