That I still kept the first watch Father had given me, even though it had not worked in years.
“You could have it repaired,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you?”
I considered that.
“I suppose I like it the way it is.”
“Broken?”
“Connected to a particular time.”
She understood.
Mother’s health declined slowly.
The doctors had been clear.
There would be no miraculous reversal.
And yet her final months did not feel like a continuous tragedy.
That was something I had not expected.
There were difficult days.
There were also ordinary ones.
Mother watched terrible television and complained loudly.
Clara brought paints and convinced her to make a watercolor of the garden.
Mother’s painting looked nothing like a garden.
“It is abstract,” she insisted.
“It looks like vegetables falling down stairs,” I said.
Clara nearly dropped her brush laughing.
Mother threw a tissue at me.
