Lesson of the Watch
When Richard McCarrick died in 1987, those who knew him mourned. He had almost reached the proverbial “four score and ten,” and his extended family firmly believed that he was in heaven, but that didn’t stem their grief. Sadly, after the final ceremonies, Richard’s wife gathered together his favorite possessions to pass to his loved ones.
“Grandma, can I keep Grandpa’s watch, the one he wore these last few years?” asked Kay, Richard’s teenage granddaughter. It was an inexpensive Casio model, digital, and showed both the time and the date. Kay and Richard had been close; he was especially interested in her athletic ability and loved to attend her sporting events. Now she was old enough to understand the finality of death, and she hoped the watch would help her feel closer to him. Her grandmother agreed. Kay wore the watch for a few months, then put it in a dresser drawer.
The watch stayed in the drawer. Kay moved eventually to a place of her own, leaving it behind. From time to time, during college and her first jobs, she checked on it at her parents’ home. The watch was still ticking, even though one that she had purchased for herself in the late ‘80’s was already broken.
Kay became a peace officer and was hired by the University of Minnesota Police Department. Since she was moving again, she went through the last of her possessions still stored at her parents’ home. She pulled open a drawer—and there was Grandpa’s watch. It was still ticking.
Kay was astonished. “Dad,” she asked, “did you put a new battery in Grandpa’s watch?”
“Why would I do that?” her father asked. “I didn’t even know the watch was here all this time.”
“Well, look,” she held it up. “It’s still running. Whoever heard of a battery lasting fourteen years?”
No one had, so Kay took the watch to a jeweler, explained the circumstances and asked his opinion. “I’ve never opened the back of the watch,” she told him. “And I wouldn’t want you to either—it might disturb something.”
The jeweler was amazed. “I’ve never heard of a watch battery lasting more than five years,” he said. “Seems like a miracle to me.”
Kay put the watch in her jewelry box. When her grandmother passed away in 2003, Kay checked the watch—as she was now doing frequently. It was still ticking. As of now, the watch has been keeping perfect time for twenty years, needing only an adjustment for daylight savings time and Leap Years.
Kay is convinced that the watch is an indication that her grandfather is still watching over his family, still interested in her life and her safety (several times she has been in the line of danger at work, but has always come through unscathed.) “I believe that God sends us little signs all the time,” she says.
“Most of us are so wrapped up in daily life that we don’t see them.” The watch will stop when it is time, she says. She has already learned its lesson.
(C) 2005 Joan Wester Anderson www.joanwanderson.com
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I also have a story to tell of a watch that my dad left to my husband. He left this world just recently, in Sept of o9 and we all miss him terribly. He was a kind and loving father as well as the president of a water well co. srarted by his great grandfather in the early 1900″s.
My husband worked for my father at the co. for 35 years or so, and they became great friends.
Every year it has been a tradition to have a co. Christmas party ans it was hard not having dad there this year with us at dinner. My husband was wearing the watch that dad wore everyday before he died and for some unknown reason that watch stopped just as we sat down to eat and restarted by itself when we returned home! It has been working just fine ever since! I guess Dad was telling us he was there with us that night, like he always had been, even though we couldent see him. What a beautiful gift!