Kenny's Watch

It was a year later when I held his still-ticking watch in my hand. Still ticking. He was dead, gone for a year and his watch was still ticking. I didn't know whether to lash out in anger or sit down and sob. My precious first born son, my baby, was dead before he reached twenty-five years of age, in a car accident.

His car was demolished, He was dead without a scratch on him I'm told. But his watch was still ticking. It too, didn't have a scratch but the band was broken.

I put his watch away, still ticking, to look at on another day.

Twenty-six years later I read in a book where someone picked up the watch of their loved one who had died an hour ago. She was stunned. In reading this sentence, I broke down and cried as if I had never cried before. That moment was still buried inside me. Deep inside me. I don’t think of him until a reason comes to be that makes me think of him. Yet I read a sentence in a book and break down and cry. Does it ever truly heal? Are we ever reconciled with the tragedies in our lives?

Even understanding about life-after-life, and accepting it gladly, it’s the loss of the physical that lingers and wounds.