The Chimes of Big Ben
There's a keywound clock on the wall down there, standing still at a quarter to five. It's not broken, but I haven't wound it in months. I gave it to my mother for Christmas more than ten years ago, after her stroke, and I wound it meticulously all the remaining days of her life. It would chime the hour and the half-hour, but it has never quite kept accurate time. I ordered it out of the J. C. Penney catalog. We hung it on the wall outside her room, that Christmas, and she was very pleased. It reminded her of bygone days, days, perhaps, that never were, but I think the regularity of its rhythms soothed and reassured her. Her world was reduced to the dimensions of those few rooms, but she bacme connected, I think, to the past, the future, and the larger world by the ticking of that timepiece.
I should wind it and let it run. Not that it will bring her back, or that I will even notice it that much, but sometimes, in the night, I heard it toll out the hour, and it made those small eternities of insomnia bearable. It kept me company when I was up all night with an unbearable toothache: yes, it assured me, morning will come and, sometime after that, this agony wil end. A few turns of the key, a gentle push to the pendulum, and time begins again. What an excellent idea.
