Frozen in Time

The pocket watch was old, the silver color tarnished from being handled so many times. The outside had an intricate floral design, roots and leaves growing from a few roses itched into the middle. It was pretty, subtle, and not overwhelming. The watch didn't have to try hard to catch attention, and it would have made a nice accessory to add to a waistcoat pocket. 

But this was a watch owned by Brian Crawford, so at most, it was tucked into the pocket of a pair of blue jeans, stained and faded with time. The watch went with him everywhere, checked more frequently than his phone. It followed him into the field when it was time to harvest the crops for the year when he went out to the bars with friends and as a spectator at his daughter's softball games. It was like a limb, something that needed to be within touching distance.

Oftentimes he would take it out of his pocket, flip the silver lid open, stare at the time for a few seconds, and drop it back into where he got it from. It was almost mechanical, like how someone who smoked had to get their nicotine hit every day. You did not think about it, but it was a need - an obsession.

It was a comfort for him, just like some people tapped their fingers when nervous or twirled their hair when bored. It was part of a routine, and Annabel never understood why her daddy did it. For as long as she could remember, he always had that watch on him. It was just as familiar to her as the brand of beer her daddy drank after a long day in the fields. 

When Annabel was eleven, she caught him checking the watch again before he took a piece of garlic bread from the middle of the dining room table. She twirled the spaghetti around and around her fork, scraping against her mother's good china. Her momma had been dead for the last three years, a drunk driver hitting the family station wagon at such a high speed she died on impact. 

That night they received a knock on the door from the sheriff, his hat off his head, condolences on the tip of his tongue. Annabel saw her daddy cry for the first and only time. She had never heard the noise he made from another person, a sound so quiet, but loud in the utter pain it portrayed. He had dropped to the floor, head facing the ground as his body shook with hard, jerking cries. The sheriff had huddled down to the floor beside him, dropping the hat on the ground, and pulling her dad into a tight hug as if trying to muffle the noises coming from him. It was like he was trying to tourniquet a bleeding wound.

She had been so scared she ran into her room, opened the door to the closet, and huddled into a ball in the corner. It was filled with the frills and bows of childhood, and it smelled like fresh laundry Momma had done just the night before. She could still vaguely hear the noises her daddy made, so she curled even tighter, hands gripping her ears tightly to block it out. She stayed in the closet for the next few hours, huddled in the corner, trying to sleep off this nightmare. If she woke up, would everything go back to normal?

Annabel remembers that the funeral had to be a closed casket because it had been so bad. She had overheard her daddy talking to Reverend Wilkins about it when she finished going to the bathroom after Sunday service. 

The whole congregation had sung a few hymns in her momma’s honor, and Annabel had received more hugs today than she had her whole life. Mrs. Breket had given her such a sudden, tight hug that she had accidentally inhaled a feather from the monstrosity she called a hat on her head. 

When she overheard their voices in the room across from the bathroom, she quickly dried her hands on the floral dress she had on. It was easy to avoid the creaky board outside of the room they were in with a quick sidestep before she huddled behind the door that was still propped open just a smidge.

If she squinted her right eye just a little and peeked through the crack by the hinges, she could vaguely make out her daddy pacing. 

“...open casket funeral,” Reverend Wilkins was saying, sitting behind his desk and hands folded under his chin. 

He was a small man, but the whole church knew from experience that he could be heard from any corner of the room when he wanted to be. Annabel, as early as she could recall, had memories of him standing in front of the congregation, bible in hand, and a smile on his face. She always felt like he knew what he was speaking about, a quiet confidence to him as he read from the word of God. 

“The coroner said that the body was badly burnt, so we have no choice but to make it a closed casket.” Her daddy’s body seemed to lose all strength at that statement, his tall height dropping as his spine curved forward. He sighed, rubbing his hands over his tired face. He had aged a lot in the last few days like all life had been sucked from him when the sheriff came to deliver the news.

“You know,” her daddy said suddenly, spine straightening as he pulled something from his pocket. Annabel knew it was the watch without even seeing it. He always had it on him, but in the last few days, she had seen him staring at it more than he ever had in the past. The familiar click of it being pushed open was familiar to her now, something she could hear out of any loud room. “This was a wedding gift from my daddy to Louisa and I.”

He walked over to Reverend Wilkins, the wooden floorboard creaking under his feet with each step. He paused in front of the desk, staring at the pocket watch with probably that weird look in his eyes before sliding it across. 

“This is a mighty fine watch,” the Reverend commented, rubbing his pointer finger across the gold embossed cover. “But it seems to be stuck at -”

A hand grabbed the back of Annabel's dress, making her let out a little scream of fright. She turned around and saw that Mrs. Breket, a big hat sitting crooked on her head, had reached down to grab her. She tried to calm her beating heart, scared she was going to get scolded for spying on an adult conversation.

“There you are darling,” Mrs. Breket crooned, wrinkled hand reaching out to pinch Annabel’s cheek. The overwhelming smell of what she called old lady lotion made her sneeze. “Now where is your daddy, girl, I have some green bean casserole to give y'all.”

“I am right here,” her daddy said, opening the door and coming out of the room. Annabel could see that he had the pocket watch again, whatever conversation that had been happening in the room coming to a stop.

“Hmp,” Mrs. Breket sniffed, nose in the air like she had just smelled something sour. “I told you to call me Betty! Now, come follow me. The old girls of the church have some casseroles and comfort food to give your family. It is clear you need some fattening up, as you have lost…”

The conversation faded as they walked away, her daddy's arm wrapped around Mrs. Breket. The chain to the pocket watch swayed with each step he took further and further away, and Annabel’s eyes watched it for as long as she could, almost hypnotized, before they disappeared behind the corner. Her heart settled down, but a frown crept up on her face.

What had Reverend Wilkins been about to ask about the dang watch? 

As the years passed, Annabel still found herself curious about the watch, but she never asked her daddy why he always had it out. It did not matter where he was, like the church, her senior dance recital, or parent-teacher conferences. Like clockwork, he would start fidgeting before he pulled it out to check. She had once asked her daddy for the time, and instead of pulling the watch out, he had grabbed his phone to tell her. 

But as the years passed, the older the family of two got. Soon Annabel had to wear a bra, something her daddy had asked some of the ladies of the church to help with. They were the same people she had to go to when she got her first period and when Will Nyhus asked her to homecoming. Her daddy developed more wrinkles, white hair encroaching on his sideburns and soon overtaking his whole head. He complained about his knees more, and she often found him trying to rub the pain away when they sat in the living room together to watch Friday Night Lights. Soon it changed from the knees to these splitting headaches he suddenly developed.

The night of her senior homecoming dance Daddy had stayed inside instead, lights off and a cold cloth resting on his forehead, instead of taking the shotgun out to greet Will like he usually did. The watch rested on his lap like a guard dog, gripping it so tightly his fingers had gone bone white. Annabel thinks that was the first sign that something was not normal. He soon started complaining about shortness of breath and his vision getting fuzzy at times. When she begged him to go to the town doctor for a checkup, he laughed at her, hands cradling the watch again.

“If the good Lord thinks it is my time to go,” he said, staring out at the stars as they sat in his workshop. The buzz of the crickets echo across the fields, fireflies lighting up the night sky. It was hot, but not the kind of hot that most people thought of. It felt muggy, like each time you breathed in you were swallowing something sticky, maybe honey or molasses. 

“Then it is my time to go.” And that was the end of the conversation. 

It wasn't until he had collapsed out in the fields that he realized it was not the pains of him getting older, but was something seriously wrong. It was brain cancer, the doctor had told them as they sat in the office. Doctor Griggs had said it with a sad look on his face, looking at her daddy straight in the eyes. Annabel knew that they waited too long. This was the same man who had looked her straight in the face when she had torn her ACL during her sophomore year of softball. She never was able to play again after that surgery.

Her daddy’s body was being consumed by cancer, and there was nothing no chemotherapy or surgery was going to be able to solve. It was too late. 

It was hard to watch someone who had always been so strong be killed by something they couldn't fight. Her daddy lasted for eight months, beating the doctor's predictions of six months by pure stubbornness and the desire to see his daughter graduate. Just as she was packing up to leave town and go to college, he was packing to leave Annabel behind forever.

As she sat by his hospital bed, hand gripping him tightly, she let a few tears escape her eyes. Annabel remembered being sad when her momma had died, but this was different. She had vague memories of her momma twirling her around the kitchen, dancing to slow songs playing on the radio with her dad, and getting her hands dirty in the garden.

But this was her daddy, who had been a part of her life longer than her momma had been. A few tears escaped her clenched eyes, landing with quiet plots on their hands.

“Oh Annabel, my bug,” Daddy rasped, trying to swallow around the feeding tube. “My little bug, don't you cry. I got to see you graduate, and I am so proud of the young lady who walked across that stage.”

“But…I don’t want to be alone, daddy. If you leave me, I will be all alone!” The sobs overtook her body as she collapsed on the bed in front of her, clutching the hand of someone who had once taught her how to walk. 

“My little girl, you will never be alone.” Here he paused, before grabbing something that sat in his lap. She heard a familiar click and knew it was that damn pocket watch again. Annabel let a few more tears escape, sniffing as she sat back up.

“What do you mean?” 

“You see this watch?” he asked, reaching over to finally let her grip the cold metal. She flipped it around her in her hands, fingers tracing a familiar path that he had also followed all the time. It rotated in her hands a few times before stopping so she could finally look at the watch face. It was nothing special. It was actually broken, the minute and second hand frozen in time at 2:31 in the afternoon. 

“It’s broken,” she mumbled, tears drying up finally.

“It was a gift from my daddy to your momma and I on our anniversary. I carried it with me everywhere because your grandpa said a good southern gentleman always had a watch to tell the time.”

She looked up at him, not used to hearing stories about her grandparents. It was a touchy subject, as they had died a year after her parents married. Grandma went first, and it was said Grandpa followed her because of a broken heart.

“Why didn't you ever get it fixed?” she asked, totally willing to allow curiosity to distract her for a few more minutes.

“It stopped when my Louisa died,” he explained. “The minute your momma’s heart stopped beating, this watch stopped. I kept it with me as a constant reminder that she was gone. I wanted to remember that the love of my life, my one and only, had died, and yet my heart was still beating.”

And suddenly, Annabel could see all the times he took out the watch to look at it. She saw him take it out a million times, but the look in his eyes made a lot more sense. In all honesty, he never seemed to take the time to grieve the loss of her momma and he probably was not able to because he still had a daughter to raise. The only time she had seen him cry was that horrible night when the sheriff had knocked on the door. It makes sense that he kept it with him as a constant reminder of what he lost, but still had.

“Daddy…that isn't healthy.” 

“But,” he said, giving her a small smile with the energy he had left. “I can finally let go. I watched you grow up into a woman that we would have been proud of. I think it’s time for me to see your momma again.”

Annabel watched as he laid back down, and finally understood that he was ready to go. She gave a wobbly smile, trying to hand the watch back to him. He shook his head, pushing it back into her hands.

“I want you to keep this safe for me now. I love you, my little bug.”

“I love you, too.”

“...I just want to dance with her one last time in the kitchen...” he whispered, eyes drifting shut as the smile stayed on his face. “One last time...”

She looked down at the watch, and watching as the hands moved for the first time in years, she knew that he wouldn't last the night. 

And Annabel stayed with him for another few hours, watching as the breaths he took became shorter and shorter, before they finally stopped, the ticking of the pocket watch echoing in the small room. 

tik tok 

tik tok 

BA-dum

BA-dum 

Her daddy might have died that day to join her momma, but Annabel did realize something important about him, about life. Sometimes grief is the love you want to give to the person who is gone, who is no longer able to accept that love. It consumed her daddy and made him obsessed with a pocket watch as a placeholder for that love. Sometimes, even if it is painful, you have to allow yourself to feel that grief, feel that pain.