How Long Is Forty-Seven Years? A moment in existence but long enough to live a lifetime: marriage, career, children, divorce, failure, despair, hope, longing. What if you felt the sudden emergence of a mental image so vivid and real the passage of years is erased at light speed? What if that memory, appearing occasionally in dreams, awakened at the mention of a once familiar name, a long forgotten touch, could become real? Would you go back to the haunting, intoxicating, sometimes painful memory of a first true love?.