Daughter of Time

We can let grief suffuse our beings, or we can choose to steep ourselves in joy when we remember our loved ones.

Maybe my father, who used to be a watchmaker, made a mistake in setting the time on the clock of his life when death found him at the young age of 53 — alone in his apartment — with a freezer full of vegetables, chicken, pork, turkey, and his favorite home-made sausages.

Unlike an escapement, a device that transfers energy to the timekeeping element, my father could not make his heart beat anymore. It stopped the “ticking” sound that the escapement made in watches and clocks. In the deadbeat, the pallets have a second curved “locking” face on them, but in my father’s case, the heart attack most likely brought on by his type one diabetes, left no route for escape. Deadbeat. Not beating death, which I found infuriating.

Not only did I feel robbed of my father, but I also thought it was unfair for him to leave me at 25. Although my parents were divorced, my mother’s pain was inconsolable. She cried and cried. Her tears never dried, as she refused to loosen the claws of death that choked her being and kept her ensconced in a state of unhappiness and depression many years after my father’s death.