When Time Stood Still

There are moments in life that slip by unnoticed—mundane, ordinary, quickly forgotten. And then there are moments so vivid, so charged with feeling, that they burn into memory. Moments when the world holds its breath, and time, for a blink, stands still.

Mine came on an unusually warm spring afternoon, just after lunch, when the sky was an impossible shade of blue and the air hummed with the promise of something sacred.

My mother was sitting on the porch swing, her thin hands wrapped around a chipped ceramic mug filled with chamomile tea. She had always preferred it lukewarm. I watched her from the kitchen window for a while—watched how the sunlight spilled over her silver hair, how the gentle creak of the swing kept time with the breeze, how her smile flickered like a quiet flame as she stared out at the garden.

It had been six months since her diagnosis. The kind of cancer no one talks about over coffee. The kind that doesn’t give you a chance to prepare for goodbye.

I walked outside and sat beside her without a word. We had stopped filling silence with noise weeks ago. What was once awkward had become comforting. We had learned to speak in gestures—her hand on my knee, my head on her shoulder, a shared glance when the wind knocked over the garden gnome.

That day, though, she broke the silence.

“You know, I think time stops in moments like this,” she said softly, not looking at me. “The world keeps spinning, but inside… everything just pauses.”

I didn’t answer. My throat was tight. I knew what she meant.

She turned to face me, her eyes clearer than I’d seen them in days. “Do you remember when you were seven, and you fell off your bike in the driveway?”

I nodded.

“You scraped your knee and screamed like your heart was breaking.” She chuckled. “I ran out, picked you up, and you said, ‘Mama, don’t move. Stay right here.’ I sat with you on the curb for hours, just holding you. Time stopped then too.”

That memory flooded back—her arms around me, the warm press of the concrete, the distant song of birds. I hadn’t thought of it in years, but suddenly, I felt seven again.

She reached out, taking my hand in hers. “I want you to remember this moment. Right now. The air, the quiet, this swing. Me.”

I squeezed her hand. “I will.”

And I have.

That afternoon became the hinge of my life—the pause before the door opened to loss. She passed a few weeks later, in her sleep, without pain, as if even death knew not to disturb the stillness she so deeply treasured.

For a long time after, I searched for that feeling again—the stillness, the peace, the clarity. I found it sometimes in the unexpected: the pause before a kiss, the hush of snowfall, the silence between two friends who don’t need to speak to be heard.

Time, I learned, doesn’t need to move to mean something. Some of the most important things in life happen in moments so still they feel outside of time—where love is remembered, pain is softened, and gratitude is born.

Years have passed, but that porch swing still creaks with the wind. And when I sit there with a cup of chamomile, I hear her voice in the quiet. I remember her touch, her laughter, the way her eyes saw right through to my soul.

That’s when time stands still again.

Moral / Life Lesson:

Life’s most profound moments don’t always arrive with grand gestures or loud celebrations. Sometimes, it’s in the stillness that we find what matters most. Pause often. Love deeply. Let time stand still when it needs to.

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Thank you for reading...

Regards: Fazal Hadi