You can never anticipate when a moment will be etched into your brain. The memory is a spark, significant at the time – a smell, a tone of voice, an expression on someone's face, or a word spoken in passing – but soon extinguished from your consciousness.
Alternately, the memory may be a life-changing moment – the birth or death of a loved one, a doctor's diagnosis, a major accomplishment, or the first time falling in love – flooding the mind, receding over time, but always there.
A third type of memory falls somewhere between the two. An unexpected moment, you realize only much later, divides your life into a 'before' and 'after' existence. When this happens to a middle-aged adult, the moment precipitates a 'second coming-of-age.'
My name is Mark Aherne, fifty-eight years old, a husband and the father of two grown children. I enjoy an interesting, but unexceptional, career. I'm part of a successful marriage of thirty-five years with the normal ups and downs one expects when sharing a life with another person. My parents are alive and financially secure.
My childhood in the 1950s...
I'm getting ahead of myself.
For me, everything changed on a September afternoon in 2004...
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The Thief of Lost Time
General FictionMark Aherne, a middle-aged man, receives an emergency phone call to come to his parents' home as soon as possible. Once there he can no longer avoid the fact that his elderly parents need help if they are to continue living independently. Over time...
