The Sometimes Why

Picture a seven-year old me kneeling at a coffin. My head down like I was praying. My grandfather’s viewing. I was terrified. It had to be the first dead person I’d ever seen. I lifted my chin and dared myself to open my eyes. Doing anything to make sure my gaze never caught a glimpse of his face, I focused on his hands; More specifically the watch on his wrist. Gold dial…beautiful blue face; the day of the month at the three o’clock mark, and a worn, brown leather band. I was fascinated with the thin, gold second hand ticking over Tudor Prince Oysterdate lettering. Why was the watch still running? Why would grandpa go to heaven with a running watch? Sadly the concept of symbolism was lost on my seven-year-old intellect. What I remember thinking was that it had to be wrong to bury him with a watch that was still working like that. I convinced myself that maybe it was a mistake. So I reached into the box and took it right off his stiff, dead hand. What the hell? I didn’t even look out to notice if anyone had seen me. With my fingertips I carefully grabbed at the tiny buckle on the band and unfastened it. I was doing everything possible to avoid touching his skin, but occasionally I’d feel the dead flesh against my own. I cringed. I got up with the watch concealed in my palms. Suddenly I was overcome with fear and regret. I rushed to the ladies room. I sat in the stall shaking, fighting for air. Maybe I was going to die. I’ll put it back. But how? The bathroom door swings open and my Aunt Elaine rushes in. She’s crying inconsolably. My mom comes in to comfort her. Through the slat opening in the stall I can see Aunt Elaine sobbing; sobbing in my mother’s arms. Tears in my mother’s eyes…missing their dad. All the while I’m gripping the dead man’s watch. When they pulled themselves together and left. I shoved it in my coat pocket, and when I got home I tucked it in my dresser in the pajama draw, second from the top. Returning the watch never got another thought. Too risky…too selfish. It would be my little dark secret. One afternoon I came home from school and my father was sitting on the couch. It was weeks after the funeral. He was just sitting there staring at me as I made my way into the living room, and put down my books. He motioned for me to come and sit with him. On the wrist he waved me over with, he was wearing the watch. I remember resigning myself to the fact that punishment of some manner was imminent. But, guess what? It turns out that my dad felt the same way that I did about the watch going to waste in a casket. He tells me the only reason they were going to bury grandpa with the Rolex Tudor Prince Oysterdate with the steel blue dial in the first place was that his daughters, Aunt Elaine and my Mom, were at war over who got to keep it after the old man dropped. And now it would forever belong to our side of the family. Now it was our dark secret. I had done good. My birthday is February 29th. The family would always celebrate on March 1st on non-leap years. But 1980 was a leap year, I remember. And for my eighth birthday we went to Disney World. The night before we left for Orlando I was woken really late by my parents fighting. They fought their share, but this was bigger and louder. They were in the backyard. My dad had a shovel. He had dug a hole in the yard lawn. I watched my mother place something in the hole he dug. The watch. The secret unraveled when my mother found a pawnshop receipt in his pants pocket. A receipt for the Rolex Tudor Prince Oysterdate with the steel blue dial. Dad pleaded with my mother that I had stolen it, and not him. I went right under the bus. And he was just pawning it for extra vacation money to make me happy. My mother had dragged him to the shop to pull it out of hock. The backyard scene was a second attempt at getting the watch in the ground. After the station wagon was packed in the morning my mother called a family meeting. Mom went on to explain that the Rolex had been a gift that my grandfather had received from my grandmother when he returned from Vietnam. For bravery and being wounded grandpa was to receive a Purple Heart. Believing that he was just “doing his job” he didn’t take the medal. Grandma got him the gold watch with the steel blue face as a more subtle recognition of the hero he was in her eyes. A watch, the colors of the Purple Heart, or close enough. Symbolism. Grandpa passed when he succumbed to the effects of Agent Orange. When things had become terminal, my grandmother asked Aunt Elaine and my mom to get together and have the watch fixed and refurbished. The sisters pitched in for the cost. That’s why it was running in the coffin. The shit my dad fed me about the sisters fighting over the watch never happened.