The Clock on the Wall

I never liked that clock.

It was in our lounge room, a tacky, ticking plastic affair that was never quite right for the decor. The glass was broken from when I'd thrown a cricket ball indoors and blamed the kid next door. The numbers were beginning to wear off. Yet my father never got a new one.

It still works," he'd say, rapping the glass with his knuckle.

That was Dad — practical to a fault. He never purchased anything twice if the original still worked. His shirts were always neatly patched at the elbows. His shoes shined until they gleamed — even when they were ten years old. He used things, loved people, and wasted nothing.

Except perhaps time — the one thing that never returned.


---

Growing up, I always thought my father didn’t feel much.
He did not hug us for no reason.
Never yelled at us unless we really messed up.
Never cried — not even at his own father’s funeral.

He put in a 10-hour day at the power plant, came home with grease on his hands and weariness on his shoulders, then went out to inspect the generator behind our house because, "if I don't, who will?"

He did not read me bedtime stories. He did not attend my school's poetry contest. And when I said I was going to study literature, not engineering, he just nodded and said, "Just make sure you can earn from it."

I confused that silence with indifference.


---

Years went by. I left for the city. College, career, apartment — the works. Mom would call me every Sunday, giving me updates on Dad's health, or the lack thereof.

"He doesn't sleep well," she once remarked.
"His knees hurt. He won't see a doctor."

"Tell him to rest," I would answer nonchalantly.
Yet I wouldn't phone him. I'd always intended to. But never did.

Then one morning, the call came.


---

It was Mom. Her voice cracking.
He fell in the garage. The doctor said… his heart.
Silence.
"You should come."


---

I returned home to see him sitting up in bed, wires all over the place, oxygen tube in his nose. He was smaller, as if someone had deflated the man who used to lift water tanks on his own.

"Still wearing that silly watch?" he rasped with a weak grin, gazing at the digital wristwatch he had given me on my 18th birthday.

I nodded, abruptly speechless. My throat seared with the guilt of distance.

He extended his hand and touched my wrist. "Good. It's waterproof."


---

That evening, I sat next to him, watching him as he slept. I saw how the fingers of time had etched lines on his face. How his hands, strong and stained with labor once, now quivered as they rested.

I glanced around the house — it was the same.
Mom's plastic flowerpots on the window.
Dad's bookcase full of aging car manuals.
And that blasted clock still ticking away on the wall.

For a moment, I hated it even more — the way it just kept going while everything else fell to pieces.


---

In the following days, he weakened. But also. softened.

He inquired about my job. He inquired whether I had anybody special.

He even managed, "I'm proud of you," although his voice broke in the middle.

One night, he had me sit with him and sort through some old letters. In them was a picture of me, 7 years old, clutching a toy wrench. On the back, in his handwriting: "My boy will fix anything — even the world."

I broke down.

"Why did you never say things like that out loud?" I asked.


He smiled weakly. "Because I was too busy showing it."

---

On his final morning, he requested two things:


1. His tea, with two sugars.



2. For me to wind the old clock.

"It slows down if you don't wind it," he replied.

While I moved the hands, he shut his eyes.


When I turned back, he had stopped breathing.

---

We laid him to rest by the garden. The same one he planted each spring by his own hands. I stood by as they put the coffin into the ground. My heart was numb, but my eyes could not remain dry.

At home, I sat in his chair. For the first time, I actually heard the clock ticking. Steady. Calm. Untroubled by sorrow.


I realized it wasn’t just a clock.

It was him — a symbol of time spent, not wasted.

Of love shown, not spoken. --- Now, I wind it up every Sunday. I take my tea as he did. I wear his flannel shirts with patches when I write. And sometimes, when I pass the garage, I could swear I still catch a whiff of grease and dust and the silent, obstinate love of a man who never spoke it — but always meant it.