Four Thousand Weeks

The average life is about four thousand weeks.

I looked it up one night when I couldn't sleep,

and I sat there with a pencil like an idiot at two a.m.

doing sums a man should probably never do.

I'm at two thousand and change. Give or take the luck.

So there's maybe eighteen hundred left, if the numbers hold —

which sounds enormous till you write it down,

and then it sits there on the paper looking small.

Then I did the one that took the air out of the room:

I see my mother twice a year. She's seventy-two.

So if she gets to ninety — and God, let her get to ninety —

that's thirty-six more times. That's it. That's the whole number.

Thirty-six more Sunday lunches. Thirty-six more hugs at the door.

I have owned shoes that lasted longer than the rest of my mother.

So I booked a flight that night. I booked it at three a.m.

And I didn't tell her why, and I'm not going to.

Four thousand weeks. Four thousand weeks.

That's the whole allocation, and there's no appeal,

no bonus round, no overtime, no arguing the ruling —

just four thousand little Sundays and the way they make you feel.

And I have spent three hundred of them

lying next to you and doing nothing much at all —

and if you asked me for the rest of them right now,

you could have every single one. You could have them all.

Now the terrible arithmetic has made me kind of strange:

I don't check my phone at dinner anymore,

I let the dog take the long way round the park,

I answer when my brother calls, first time.

'Cause the number doesn't scare me half as much

as the thought of spending Wednesdays like they're free —

they're not free. They were never free.

They were four thousand, and they were the whole estate.

(THE SECOND LAW, spoken, flat) Your calculation is approximately correct.

I would add only that the figure is a median.

You may receive considerably fewer.

(THE HEART, quietly) Yeah. I know.

(a beat) That's why I'm going to bed early.

She's already up there.

Four thousand weeks. Four thousand weeks.

Oh, it's not a tragedy — it's a budget, love, it's a map!

And I've been spending like a rich man

on a fortune I don't have —

so let's waste the good ones properly,

let's blow the whole account on this:

one more coffee that goes cold while we're talking,

one more week. One more week. One more week.