In 1964 my mother bought a clock in the city where we lived.
A clock to stand in the hall, purchased with money when her mother died she received. Not a lot of money. Enough to buy the clock when I had only just begun to enter high school. The clock ticked in the hall. It kept time. I don’t remember the hall or much at all of that home. The clock kept time. We moved a lot. The clock stood in different halls and chimed the quarter hour. I remember the ticking, the pendulum swinging back and forth, the hands turning in the elaborate face and the three weights that kept it alive.
I want to make a statement here.
Please take note.
When my mother bought the clock she did so in love and remembrance. She could have bought anything within her means with the money she inherited from her mother. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t a fortune.
My mother spent what she received on love and remembrance and time, precious time which is a measure of life. The clock kept time all through the life of my family, her family with my father and we children in the house.
Births. Deaths. Good news. Bad news. Triumphs. Celebrations. Tragedies and Sorrow. Tears and Laughter. Decades upon one another until first my father died and then my mother and somewhere in all of there, the clock.
It stopped.
Out of the home my parents kept it got transported to a place no one kept anything. Ruin. Discord. Filth and Dereliction and there it stood, the silent clock like a disapproving elder, too offended and angry to say anything, too civilized to strike not the hour but the ruffians who ignored it.
Now the clock runs again.
It keeps time. It chimes.
It stands where it belongs, because now once more as once before love and sentiment have lifted the weights and set the hands in motion above the back and forth oscillations of the pendulum. Remembrance and peace have restored the time piece and so long as they endure the clock will serve its purpose.
It tolls for thee.
ƒ