Leaving Time

by Jodi Picoult

The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it … some stories just don’t have a happy ending.

I’ve always been a loner, and I’ve never really felt like I belong here.

When I think this, which is often, I’m thinking of Earth.

When someone leaves you once, you expect it to happen again. Eventually you stop getting close enough to people to let them become important to you, because then you don’t notice when they drop out of your world.

“It’s egotistical to think that humans have a monopoly on grief. There is considerable evidence that elephants mourn the loss of those they love.”

I always get the funniest expressions from colleagues when I tell them that the best scientists understand that 2–3 percent of whatever it is they are studying is simply not quantifiable—it may be magic or aliens or random variance, none of which can be truly ruled out. If we are to be honest as scientists … we must admit there may be a few things that we are not supposed to know.

not cliché

not a cliché

I once saw an Asian elephant in Thailand who had been trained to do a trick. All the schoolchildren brought to meet him at the reserve where he was kept in captivity were told to sit in a line. Then they were asked to take off their shoes, and these shoes were jumbled into a pile. The mahout who worked with the elephant then instructed her to give the shoes back to the children. The elephant did, carefully weeding through the pile with her trunk and dropping the shoes that belonged to each child in his or her lap.

Humans probably couldn’t do this.

What is interesting is that elephants can accurately and reliably figure out who is friend and who is foe. Compare this to us humans, who still walk down dark alleys at night, fall for Ponzi schemes, and buy lemons from used-car salesmen.

human animals

I was eight years old when I realized the world was full of people no one else could see.

I was six.

Well, there are psychics who bilk people out of money. I call them the swamp witches, the faux psychics along the side of the road. Just like there are good lawyers and ambulance chasers, good doctors and quacks, there are good psychics and charlatans. The other, odder complaint came from those who berated me for taking a God-given talent and charging money for it. To them, I apologize for not wanting to break a couple of my favorite habits—namely, eating and living indoors.

Engaging with haters is like rearranging pictures on the Titanic. What’s the point?

You cannot be a born psychic and not believe in the power of signs. Sometimes it’s the traffic that makes you miss your flight, which winds up crashing into the Atlantic. Sometimes it’s the single rose that blooms in a garden full of weeds. Or sometimes it’s the girl you dismissed, who haunts your sleep.

There is no question that elephants understand death. They may not plan for it the way we do; they may not imagine elaborate afterlives like those in our religious doctrines. For them, grief is simpler, cleaner. It’s all about loss.

Everything humans do is meant to hold back the loss for as long as possible.

I once saw a herd of elephants walking in the reserve in Botswana when Bontle, their matriarch, went down. When the other elephants realized she was in distress, they attempted to lift her with their tusks, trying to get her to stand. When that didn’t work, some of the young males mounted Bontle, again seeking to bring her back to consciousness. Her calf, Kgosi, who was about four at the time, put his trunk in her mouth, the way young elephants greet their mothers. The herd rumbled and the calf was making sounds that seemed like screams, but then they all got very quiet. At this point I realized she had died. A few of the elephants moved toward the tree line, collecting leaves and branches, which they brought to cover Bontle. Others tossed dirt onto her body. The herd stood solemnly with Bontle’s body for two and a half days, leaving only to get water or food, and then returning. Even years later, when her bones had been bleached and scattered, her massive skull caught in the crook of a dry riverbank, the herd would stop when passing by, standing in silence for a few minutes. Recently, I saw Kgosi—now a big young male of eight years—approach the skull and stick his trunk in the spot where Bontle’s mouth would have been. Clearly these bones had general significance to him. But if you had seen it, I think you’d believe what I do: that he recognized that these particular bones had once been his mother.

Were it not for opposing thumbs, and the ability to speak, we'd be far down on the list of conquering animal species.

“Maybe you are psychic.”

“Maybe you are psychic.” I'd put the emphasis on "you." Try reading it out loud and see where you put it.

“Visions are like metaphors,” Serenity explains. “Which is pretty ironic, because that’s a simile,” I say.

I love language.

“That’s like saying you found a bimbo on The Bachelor.

That Rainbow Bridge pet lovers always talk about? It’s there. I’d occasionally been told by those who’d crossed over that the person waiting for them on the other side was not a person at all but a dog, a horse, once even a pet tarantula.

I’ve been there. Near-death experience. Didn’t really want to come back, but was told it wasn’t my time yet. Feel a little bit guilty that I would’ve stayed and left my husband and kids here.

I bring up Thomas Edison. There isn’t a person on this planet who wouldn’t say he was the epitome of a scientist; that his mathematical mind allowed him to create the phonograph, the lightbulb, the motion picture camera and projector. We know he was a freethinker who said there was no supreme being. We know he held 1,093 patents. We also know that before he passed, he was in the process of inventing a machine to talk to the dead.

“In 1903 there was this elephant at Coney Island named Topsy. She helped build the theme park, and gave rides, and performed in shows. One day, her handler threw his lit cigarette in her mouth. She killed him, big surprise, and was labeled a dangerous elephant. Topsy’s owners wanted her killed, so they turned to Thomas Edison, who was trying to show the dangers of AC current. He rigged up the elephant, and she died within seconds.”

I shall never have a good thought about Thomas Edison again. If anyone got this treatment, it should’ve been her horrible trainer. Guess karma took care of that.

gotten

If I’d written this, it would say “received” instead of “gotten.”

“I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.”

Exactly. People who say it will pass in time either never loved or never lost a love. It is always there. You just learn to carry it.

Have you ever felt like the air was too heavy or gotten an inexplicable chill? That’s somatic intuition. I used to be a pretty good empath—I could walk into a room as if I were dipping my toe into bathwater to test it for energy, and know if it was good or bad, if a murder had gone down there or if there was sadness coating the walls like layers of paint.

I am an empath and a psychic. These things have their good and bad parts. Before my grandmother taught me how to put up mental shields, the cacophony of many people's thoughts nearly drove me mad.

She sighs. “Desmond and Lucinda, my spirit guides, said all the universe wants from us is two things: Don’t do any intentional harm to yourself or anyone else, and get happy.

She was good at her job, but lots of people were good at their jobs without actually enjoying what they were doing.

"Most men live lives of quiet desperation."

“Did you know that the sound of an African elephant was used in the movie Jurassic Park for the T. rex?” I said.

I didn't know that. Interesting.

None of this surprised me; I had long ago learned that elephant mothers put human ones to shame.

“You heard from her yet today?” “No.” “Why do you think that is?” “Because it’s eight A.M. and she’s a teenager.” I squirm in the passenger seat. “You don’t think it was because I was an asshole yesterday?” “After ten or eleven A.M., it will be. But right now I think it’s because she’s sleeping like any other kid during summer vacation.”

My whole life I've spent going to sleep at 4:00 am and getting up at noon. Well, my whole life when I wasn't going to school. Or working for someone else. That's the internal clock I drew.

The terminal is in the middle of the city, and I’m surprised by the amount of activity and noise. It’s like walking into a headache.

I tried living in a city once. It was, like this, a permanent headache. I was born in a small town, and intend to die in one. I don't know how anyone could enjoy living in a city.

For a little while, I stand in front of the giant map of Tennessee that is on the wall, wondering why American kids never study geography, because if they did maybe I’d have a working knowledge of this state.

Sort of funny. Geography was the only course I ever got a "B" in.

(AMERICAN BY BIRTH, SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD)

When I read this, it just says "redneck."

(SAVE A DEER, SHOOT A QUEER).

Ditto previous comment.

I remember her turning off the radio every time a singer had the slightest twang in her voice.

Doesn't everyone?

We know that when male whales sing, those who have the most complex songs are the ones who get the females.

It is absolutely astonishing to me that so many people don't think other animal species communicate.

It has been proven that whale songs are passed down from generation to generation, that they exist in all the oceans of the world. I have always wondered if the same holds true for elephants.

A flag often means they’re conservative.

I find it very amusing that people who don't even know what a patriot is, like Trump's cult members, find it necessary to hang flags or frequently refer to themselves as "patriots." It's like the "Methinks thou dost protest too much" thing.

A bruise is how the body remembers it’s been wronged.

In my case, a bruise means I've touched--or been touched by--something or other a bit harder than a pat. My mum and grandmum have this same condition. As do my children. My poor husband is always worried that someone who doesn't know what a kind and gentle man he is will think he's abusing me.

I woke up in rehab, with a shitload of OxyContin in my veins, and enough pain to kill ten men who were way stronger than me.

I got addicted to Oxy after a doctor prescribed it for several years for pain caused by an incurable Illness. He said I wouldn’t get addicted, he said I was only dependent. I eventually decided I needed to find a different way to deal with the pain, because I kept needing more and more Ocy. Doctor was wrong: body doesn’t know the difference between addicted and dependent. So I went off Oxy and my illness pain was back, plus the true hell of quitting Oxy. I didn’t have the strength of those dozen men either. But I had a family, so somehow I lived through it. You’d think pain could kill you, but it can’t.

“It is a fact universally acknowledged,” Serenity says, “there is no greater force on earth than a mother’s revenge.” The waitress who comes to refill her coffee cup gives her a strange look. “You should embroider that on a pillow,” I tell Serenity.

Or put it on a tee shirt.

Grand Poobah

When I was a little kid, I called my da this when I was mad at him. I thought I made the name up. I just Googled it, and there’s nothing related to it that I know anything about. Very strange.

“Because I was one of the few who noticed her, I guess. Ghosts are all around us, talking to each other and checking into hotels and eating at McDonald’s and doing what you and I would ordinarily do—but the only people who see them are the ones who can suspend disbelief. Like little children. Mentally ill folks. And psychics.”

But you will never be able to explain what makes an elephant leave a beloved tire behind on the grave of its best friend; or what finally makes a mother step away from her dead calf. That is the 2 percent of science that can’t be measured or explained. And yet that does not mean it doesn’t exist.

If you think about someone you’ve loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details.

There were many moments during the writing of this book when I thought that elephants may be even more evolved than humans—when I studied their grieving habits, and their mothering skills, and their memories. If you take away anything from this novel, I hope it is an awareness of the cognitive and emotional intelligence of these beautiful animals—and the understanding that it is up to all of us to protect them.

I think all the other animal species are more evolved than ours is.