Time in a Bottle

After B died, I would hear Time in a Bottle, the Jim Croce song, like EVERYWHERE.   Flipping through the car radio dial, in the mall, a friend would unexpectedly find an old CD under the sofa and play it for me.  For about a year it seemed as if Jim Croce was experiencing a rebirth of sorts twenty years or more after his own death.  B was an aesthete who liked jazz, classical and early rock so it was surprising that he glomed onto a corny Jim Croce song to remind him of us.  But he did in those early wild frequently separated days and then we mostly forgot it as we grew together for so long it didn't seem to apply to our older selves.  Obviously we wouldn't have to collect time in a bottle because we were living it in real time.  But then, life and death has its own timetable and plans are written over.  And it's surprising when a half-forgotten song ambushes me and makes me slow down for a moment to drink the time I am living right now.