Golden Hours

“You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by;
but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.”*

During the hour immediately before sunrise and the one immediately before sunset, the natural light is warmer and softer than the other daylight hours.  These two periods, known as the golden hours, are revered by professional photographers, times when they capture those dreamy, moody, beautiful shots that others admire and envy.  

The evening golden hour is, by far, my favourite time to shoot.  There’s a kind of magic that happens in the gloaming; a glorious solasta before the sun dips below the horizon.  The wind, if there was one that day, is dying, animals are returning to their lairs, birds to their nests, kiddos are being corralled for bath and bedtime rituals and a very peaceful quietude begins.  Suspended animation.

That same stillness and serenity occurs during certain moments of one’s life.  Hospice and Palliative workers, for instance, when speaking of their patients’ last hours, often describe them as golden hours, when the patients cease to struggle, calm acceptance takes over at their surety the end is close.  

In the ED, for instance, the first hour(s) after the occurrence of a traumatic injury or catastrophic cardiac event, are called the golden hours — the critical period for successful emergency treatment and recovery during which time suspended animation is often employed.

There was a moment of suspended animation in my life, forty-six years ago today…

In the room were my mum and dad, a nurse and a medical secretary who was frantically recording all the utterances of the learned gentlemen crowded around my bed: Gynecologist, Oncologist and, as TGH was then and is today one of the world’s preeminent teaching hospitals, a raft of attendant students with each specialist, all trying to make a favourable impression.  Mum had tears dribbling down her cheeks and dad’s face had gone ashen.  Neither asked a single question nor commented.  Not that day, anyway.  Terror.  That was my first reaction followed closely by horror when I heard full abdominal hysterectomy. But then, amid the frenetic babble and unfamiliar medical jargon, discussion of probable dates and times and locations, and despite the hoard in attendance, things went very, very quiet for me.  I saw their lips moving, saw the serious and concerned looks on all the faces, but inside my head, nothing.  Complete silence. Suspended animation.  A coping mechanism, obviously, but in my bubble I felt that calmness and stillness of the gloaming.  

It never happened again.

In the years since then I’ve spent hours of introspection, trying to make sense of that moment, to analyze my reaction and distraction in that hospital room.  To study every element, so that I might recognize its imminent arrival, should it recur.  Without success.  But I can recall that interlude of suspended animation with a scary clarity. 

Today was a cool, dull, damp day but right now, while I’m writing this post, the sun is out and there is the most magical of golden hours happening – one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen.  

While we’re under these stay-at-home orders, I hope you manage to find lots of exquisite moments, like this evening, to buoy your spirits and sustain your resolve.  Don’t allow the golden hours to slip by unnoticed.  

’Til next time, y’all…

*Sir James Mathew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM.  Sir James was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland.  My dad was born in Leith, almost directly across the Firth of Forth from Angus where Kirrie (JM Barrie’s birthplace) is located which, of course, guaranteed he’d be one of Dad’s literary heroes.  Scots, hey?  Go figure!

Solasta is the Scottish word for luminous beauty.

(Written Wednesday, 5th May 2021.)