Once upon a time I am walking through the doors of the Missionary Training Center for the first time. Once upon a time I am being transferred to West Valley City. Once upon a time I am eight years old, and I am being baptized, and I have never heard of a small town named Magna.
I speak in the present tense because these events are still very tangible to me. My memories, or my reconstructions of them, are not less tangible than the present moment but are differently tangible. There are times when I think back on them and almost feel whiplash from the recognition that these moments, real though they may be, are no longer my present place of habitation (but then there are times when this moment seems almost like a vivid hallucination, and the past no longer so much like a soap bubble universe).
Once upon a time I realize that I have only three months left on my mission, and I feel like it really is the end of my life. The Fifth of November hurtles toward me like a train, and I can't move away.
I don't have much time left, and that disturbs me. It reinforces the need to make every minute count, but even when I do so the strain is only barely lightened. On November 6th there will be something that I could do, but cannot, because I will be in a new life, and no matter how much I do now, there will still be something to do then.
Once upon a time I am dead, and the night is come, wherein no man can work.
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