Snuffy Cod, alter ego and soul caregiver for her dying husband... okay... stop. He does die but sometime in the futureâa future Snuffy visits on and off, along with popovers to the past and present. Snuffyâs visits occur in fits and starts via some perceived time travel portal. She embarks on these excursions several times throughout the day, hour, minute, secondâsometimes simply during a thought. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Is it escapism? Of course not. Donât be silly. Pshaw!
Meanwhile, her husband remains bedridden, unmoving upstairs on an excruciatingly slow slide to deathâdeath by molasses slick. Or is he? If Snuffy Cod can remain in the past, even the present, might she prevent a future and thereby prevent his impending death?
THE HEARTBREAK OF TIME TRAVEL is a brutally honest deep dive into dementia, caregiving, hope, grief, but mostly love.
THE HEARTBREAK OF TIME TRAVEL is literary memoir. Wingate's story twists actual events about dementia, depression, and trials of caregiving a family member.
Wingate's memoir looks at the raw and sometimes amusing side of death and dying. Written in short, punchy segments, THE HEARTBREAK OF TIME TRAVEL is an unforgettable and meaningful true story.
Snuffy Cod, alter ego and soul caregiver for her dying husband... okay... stop. He does die but sometime in the futureâa future Snuffy visits on and off, along with popovers to the past and present. Snuffyâs visits occur in fits and starts via some perceived time travel portal. She embarks on these excursions several times throughout the day, hour, minute, secondâsometimes simply during a thought. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Is it escapism? Of course not. Donât be silly. Pshaw!
Meanwhile, her husband remains bedridden, unmoving upstairs on an excruciatingly slow slide to deathâdeath by molasses slick. Or is he? If Snuffy Cod can remain in the past, even the present, might she prevent a future and thereby prevent his impending death?
THE HEARTBREAK OF TIME TRAVEL is a brutally honest deep dive into dementia, caregiving, hope, grief, but mostly love.
THE HEARTBREAK OF TIME TRAVEL is literary memoir. Wingate's story twists actual events about dementia, depression, and trials of caregiving a family member.
Wingate's memoir looks at the raw and sometimes amusing side of death and dying. Written in short, punchy segments, THE HEARTBREAK OF TIME TRAVEL is an unforgettable and meaningful true story.
âThere is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.â ~Pablo Picasso
A Note to readers about Art
I will lose some friends and family who might read words they assume are written about them. I know this going intoâinto what? What I will call story. I hope this doesnât happen and it will break my heart if it does. Still, I felt compelled to write this tale. Art is like that. Itâs a âmust doâ sort of creative release. A release that often exposes our loathing and our love.
And art is good at separating people. Separating them into groups. One group of those who love art for artâs sake and the other group of those who oppose art for what art exposes.
Oh. But, wait. Thatâs a statement for nonfiction, maybe even memoir. And this is autobiographical fiction. Isnât it?
âYou can get excited about the future. The past wonât mind.â âHillary DePiano
THE HEARTBREAK OF TIMETRAVEL
Jottings from the Past, Present, Future
âAll time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.â ~Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
PROLOGUE
The past, the present and the future walk into a bar. It was tense.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Thatâs what we say about the unexpected:
âIt was out of the blue when he filed for divorce.â
âIt came out of the blue that he kissed me.â
âIt happened out of the blue, getting COVID. On his seventy-sixth birthday, no less.â
âA blue cow fell from the sky. He was so thirsty and drank from a small pool of water near where I was standing.â
The Hubby, half-naked, laughs when I describe my dream. He giggles when I catheterize him and when he wipes his nose with his right index finger. The Hubby is all about happiness, all about giggles.
The Wife trips over a sunbeam on her way back down to the kitchen.
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
This is a tale about an aging woman named Snuffy Cod. Snuffy works diligently, self-talking. âThe F-word is bad. The F-word is bad.â She tries daily to stop using this word. Because itâs a bad effing word.
Okay, sure. Snuffy Cod is me. I am her. And Iâm not that old. Neither is she. Although, honestly, Iâm thrilled about getting my Medicare card.
Often wisdom comes with age and is not easily won.
Snuffy sometimes speaks about herself as me, first person. Sometimes we slip into second person as needed. Youâll follow. Itâs not some difficult technical white paper on fractals. Itâs just a story.
Sometimes Snuffy tells the tale in third person. She doesnât want you confused. Itâs not a confusing story. Just a story about a time in Snuffyâs lifeâmy life, her life, possibly your lifeâspent with a man who was/is dying, will die.
âI know. I know. I can hear it now,â Snuffy says. âAll the people groaning, âNot another husband dying on the wife story!ââ
Yes. Another one. But one that will test the parameters of the time and space as well as any time-space continuum.
So, hang on.
GOING NOWHERE
We need that damn time machine Science Fiction promised us forty-some-odd years ago. Probably longer. Well, yeah. Since H.G. Wells. Longer. Much longer.
The end of this story sucks. Sucks in that someone dies. Maybe. Maybe they donât and instead theyâre simply whisked away like when Elijah was spotted walking with God and was never seen again.
A note passed between classmates: Snuffy Cod wants to marry Kilgore Trout!
The Wife tiptoes onto foot-sized islands of grass to the barn-style chicken coop. Winter puddles shock her feet. She wears sandals without socks. The sandals are rubber and have destroyed the bottoms of her feetâmade horse hooves out of her solesâbut the shoes are comfortable and make her taller. Horse hooves are a small cost when it comes to comfort and two inches taller than her barefooted self.
The snow has melted. Under its weight, snow now buckled the tarp covering the chicken run. Itâs Snuffyâs fault. My fault. Snuffy blames herselfâmyself. She didnât remove the tarp. Or was it me? Letâs blame it on Snuffy.
Now, the run outside the barn looks like the shabbiest of homeless encampments ever. She expects to find homeless people living there one day with the chickens. The homeless people wonât mind the straw or feathers. Heaters make it warm inside. Heaters for the chickens and soon, homeless people. Itâs a nice homeless encampment. Better than any youâll find under the freeway in Seattle. Is that insensitive? Maybe. But the truth sound cruel.
Shame on me.
âThink before you speak!â Dad yelledâfor what, I donât know. I canât remember fifty years to back then. He explained how I shouldnât always say exactly whatâs on my mind every second of the day. This coming from Dad. Mr. I Have No Filters. Mr. Funny Man.
Whatever.
Later, he would proclaim, âYouâre the epitome! The pit of me. Get it?â
Uh, yeah, Dad. Itâs lame, but I get it.
Today, people call it filtering. You know. Controlling what you say. That pausing we do, or should do, before speaking. I question the concept because if we are to enjoy life fully, we must live life the way we find most natural for our psychological makeup. Do we not?
I donât know. Maybe not. Iâm brainstorming here.
And yes. We can have a whole other discussion about narcissists and sociopaths, but for now, letâs concentrate on nonpathological personality traits.
Snuffyâs an Old Hippie now. One of the clerks told her she was and gave her an Old Hippie discount at the pot shop. She walked out feeling groovy.
Iâm a hippie. Iâm eleven. Itâs 1969. I wear huaraches and cutoff shorts and sing protest songs at the top of my lungs. My mother explains to me that singing doesnât always have to be loud.
Later in my fifties, with Dad being dead twenty years before, my mom confessed to me, âI always wondered what was wrong with you.â
Why, gee, Ma. Thanks.
Mom had Alzheimerâs and was on a fast path to boarding her own time machine.
Today, there are starships. Things someone dreamed up in fiction past about reality future.
Snuffy lives in Science Fiction Land. I want to run away with Snuffy. But she tells me no. Sheâs off to meet Kilgore.
Why not dream of time machines? Dream that they exist.
âWeâre still working on specifics, Ms. Cod. The engineering, time stops. Forward and backward. Cellular disintegration. These sorts of things. We still need to figure out a few nagging details, but weâll get there. We got to starships, didnât we?â Dr. Who Knows? says.
The past? Filled with nuns in bumper cars and roses for the soon-to-be hubby for the boat ride to Port Townsend. Filled with crĂšme brulee and champagne, dancing, and being dipped alone on a dance floor with a band playing music for just the two of you. Past is romance.
I hate romance. Romance weakens people. Makes them squishy.
Caregivers learn well how to walk backwards. Like long-haul drivers backing up in a rig, walking backwards doesnât turn back the odometer, doesnât make you younger or get you back to where you were happy.
The Hubby hangs on tight to my arm. The Hubby and The Wife live in the land of sameness. Every day is the same. Every step. Every hour. Nine in the morning, walk hubby to peeâyou backwards, him clutching on walking forwardâbrush teeth, some days a shower, always meds twice daily, breakfast. Noon, lunch, poopâ try to poop, honey. Three in the afternoon, walk The Hubby to peeâyou backwards, him forward with a vice grip and a series of stodgy steps.
A peanut butter cookie.
Sips of water.
Six in the evening, dinner, meds again. Nine at night, walk The Hubby to peeâyou backwards, him forwardâand a pillow-head sandwich. Nighty-night.
âI love you, Hubby,â says The Wife.
Say you love me back. Please. Say you love me...
Nothing. Not anymore.
Primary progressive aphasia from frontotemporal lobe dementia (FTD) has swept all his words into the waste bin of gray matter up near his left temple.
Snuffyâs heart aches.
Please. Speak. Say, âI love you too, Wifey.â
No. No more of that. Only yes and no other words now. Only grunts and squeaks.
I pray he dies in his sleep. âI love you. Please die while you sleep.â I donât say this aloud. I think it. More often than I knew I ever would.
No struggles. No pain. No fear. Please, God. No fear.
News all day long. The Hubby, like his mom, watches news morning, noon, and night. Local news. National news. The nationâs global fiasco horror show.
âWeâre watching Law & Order now,â Snuffy says.
It sounds more like an order than a suggestion.
The Hubby giggles.
The Hubbyâs back crimps forward. His face parallel to the floor, The Hubby is the human equivalent of a question mark.
It was only two and a half years ago when we went for our last walk, the first year of COVID on a rarely-traveled, wide path by the airportâtwelve feet of wide pavement.
We refused to wear face masks. Not that we refused anyplace inside but in the open, but on that final walk, we braved COVID and quailed under sneers from a group of three masked-up women passing us in the opposite direction.
âThey donât like us,â I said.
By then, The Hubby wasnât talking much, but he said, âToo bad.â
I walk him to the bathroomâthe toilet, the shower, the sink. Only eight months ago he came downstairs, fourteen steps, one step at a time. Careful. Careful. Now, the stairs scare him. Weak knees, you see.
Now...
...zipline to future. Snuffy yearns for what I think of as normal, a Tomorrowland of normal, but at the same time, Snuffy dreads it. If only The Hubbyâs condition were reversable. An old coat with flannel on the inside, satin outside. Flip it around. Voila! A new coat. Different, but the same.
Zip to past. Our first kiss.
Zip to future again. First thing weâd do if time reversed? Kiss. Second thing? Weâd say, âHello! I missed you.â And sit at a candlelit kitchen table for hours and talk. Apologize for things we couldnât say, or did say, or things we did or did not do. Next day, take a nice long walk by the water. The day after? The worldâs the limit. We have Tomorrowland together. Why worry about what to do. A new future, one where The Hubby can talk and walkâfully functionalâwith a new body, a new brain. Maybe he would make his awful salsa soup for me again, and this timeâthis time, Iâd eat it with abandon.
PAST, PLEASE, PLEASE GO AWAY
Chia pets are back. I think thatâs important.
This is Snuffyâs sardonic wit at play.
Chia pets? Really?
Somehow, time has stalled, has become a backward spiral to the 1970s and well into stupid Christmas product ideas. And yet, I understand why. The world exists in a state of turmoil. The 70s reflect a hope and promise of love and renewal. End the war. Peace. Love. No hate.
Iâm dragging out my olive bell bottoms and crop top.
That should be horrifying for people. Old Gray Mare, the midriff ainât what it used to be.
As a child, I dreamed of flying. Even as an adult, the dreams flutter in on occasion, and I wake enlivened but with a longing that, damnit, it was just a dream. Last night I dreamed of buying one hundred acres to develop into condominiums, shopping center, community park. Building a town within a town. But a Native American woman denied the final ink. Took it back.
Finally. Victory.
Been thinking about how we might abolish the death penalty. The idea is simple. Perfect really in its simplicity. Snuffy calls it the GZ Method of Punishment. The method would alter criminal behavior as we know it. Crime rates would plummet.
Iâm giddy and canât wait to send Snuffy to D.C. to meet with elected officials.
What do I want? A sandwich board and army boots. The sandwich board will prophesy and don in bold, black painted letters reading, THE END IS NIGH on both sides, front and back.
The army boots. Because theyâre super cool.
No one on the island will comment. Islanders expect an eccentric soul now and again. Like the boy in the grocery parking lot. He has interesting ideas.
And so close to Seattle where many signs run along overpasses reading similar things, Jesus loves you! Choose Jesus, the end is near!
And such.
Observation: I havenât seen many Muslims with signs touting, Muhammed loves you.
Maybe he doesnât. Who knows why they donât carry signs? We can only speculate. Maybe Muslims know better than to force-feed their spiritual preferences down other peopleâs throats.
Atheists have been known to remove nonsecular signs. But who cares what atheists think. They have no souls. Theyâll tell you this outright.
My feet move with The Hubbyâs on a path into the future. Weâre all on some path. Only knowing where one foot will land at the precise moment it lands.
We worry our feet will slip out from under us. But we only know the moment our foot lands what the next action may or may not be. And we have no idea where we will end up until the next foot follows.
ACT I
WHERE WE START
1
I heard a really good time travel joke tomorrow.
He holds onto something precious, something invisible pinched between his thumb and index finger.
âWhatâs in those pinky fingers?â she asks.
He giggles.
She cups her hand under his.
âGive it to me. Iâll keep it for you.â
He drops the invisible artifact into her palm. She places it into the pocket of her gray sweatshirt.
His crumbling mind sees things she never will.
Donât call me old. Eff you. Iâm yesterday, eight years old. Today, twenty-seven. Tomorrow, sixty-five.
Medicare is my friend.
Yesterday is what I call âNot so bright.â Youâll be here soon. And youâll think, âWhoa. Wait. I was just seventeen...if you know what I mean.â
And before too long, youâre old and wondering what the hell happened to yesterday.
Where am I now?
And where will I be tomorrow?
We walk in a pool of honey.
The earth spins at its normal twenty-four-hour-day cycle. The moon follows the sun, although Snuffy suspects the opposite because the moon is so beautiful. The sun mustnât help but be jealous. .
We live in a 365-day year, same as you. We use the same clock although Pacific Standard. Yet things go slow around here for us. Slow as outer space and distant planets.
His face crumples with the news. For a few days, Iâm not sure he understands. I repeat the news early in the morning before words jumble together with football, or the cat, or another meal.
âDennis isnât going to make it, honey. I want you to understand what Iâm telling you. Heâs dying. He probably wonât live more than a couple more days.â
There it is. The recognition. He gets what Iâm telling him. He gets it all the way from the shower bench, through the bathroom tile, past the closet, and back into bed where he rests and lets the information brew. His face crumples twice with the news of his brother.
When someone close diesâa family member or dear friendâmen think of their future, their own mortality.
Women think about the decedentâs familyâtheir wife or husband, their children, those remaining, their grief.
âShips at a distance have every manâs wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
Now, women forget all those things they donât want to remember and remember everything they donât want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.â -~Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
***
Iâm thinking about starting an advice column called No Bad Advice with Erma Bombastic.
Erma loves giving advice. Who doesnât, right? But Ermaâs advice is, well, questionable.
For instance, her first entry will tout, âAnd remember, always drink before you eat.â
Things like that.
And âWalking around in the dark with scissors is more interesting and certainly more interesting if youâve had several cocktails before eating.â
Things like that.
And âWhatâs the point of Zero Beer, anyway?â
Things like that.
Please donât psychoanalyze Ermaâs topic of choice.
***
I would like to express my gratitude to Aja Mie, and Reedsy Discovery for the opportunity to read the Advanced Reader Copy of this text. This is what I thought of the MemoirâŠ
The Heartbreak of Time Travel by Aja Mie is marketed as a literary memoir, a type of memoir that I have not encountered prior. It is narrated predominantly by the authorâs alter ego, Snuffy Cod, who constantly reminds us that she is herself but also the author. Throughout the book, we travel through time with Snuffy Cod as she cares for her bed-ridden, dying husband who is suffering from dementia. By providing the account that she does, from the time that she does, Snuffy aims to keep her husband alive and stave off death. This book and the fact that it is in circulation ensures that he is always here.
As soon as I open the page and begin reading, I am captivated by the writing style. The reference to the dual egos of the author takes some getting used to because they are always present together, e.g., âOkay, sure. Snuffy Cod is me. I am her. And Iâm not that old. Neither is she.â However, by the time I settle into seeing them side-by-side, the author gives over to Snuffy and what I expect to be the ârealâ story begins. Only, there does not appear to be a real story.
I stayed with this book because a) it was short enough, and b) I found it absurd and found myself trapped in the book searching for a way out. Imagine, in the same breath, we are discussing deer herding, guns and hunting, and missing teeth. It was most peculiar. I also found the leaps between time distracting and questioned whether this book was truly about the husbandâs dementia, or whether in fact, it was a book about depicting Snuffy Codâs state of mind, inability to focus, and loneliness, because although she speaks of friends and acquaintances there is a lack of quality to these relationships. Do note, âtime travelâ should be thought of in the loosest sense because itâs not so much that Snuffy Cod is literally time traveling but more that she is reeling off âconsciousâ thoughts that warp in and out of time, i.e., she reflectively recounts memories in the âuniqueâ way that she thinks.
I kept hanging on waiting for the book to make sense. I was curious to know how it ended, however, it was like falling down the rabbit hole and not being able to escape quick enough. By the time I reached the end of the book, I was so dissatisfied at not finding the clarity that I was seeking despite the amount of time spent looking. Consequently, when I evaluate that I did not feel the book follows the premise, I didnât understand the text in the way I think the author meant for it to be absurd, I didnât appreciate the switching between tenses and sometimes perspective without warning, and I ended the book with negative feelings towards it, I conclude that my personal rating for the book is a 2 out of 5 stars. If I were to consider who the book might appeal to, I would probably say those that love the abstractness of translated Japanese fiction. I think this is what grabbed me about the writing. It did remind me of the oddness I felt towards The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, and A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami (the latter being one of my favorite authors đ€Ș).