by Cindi Clarke

Created on: November 12, 2008   Last Updated: December 21, 2008

When my father died in March of 2007, I took an old clock of his to hang in my house. It was one we had when I was a child living in Germany, a wooden clock with cogs and gears that operated on a weight and balance. Since the "weight" was a large rock, we had just always called it the Rock Clock. When it was properly balanced, you could pull the weight to the top and as gravity pulled it down, the clock would make a loud "tick tock" sound as the wooden gears moved. As a child the sound was comforting to me, and I sought that same comfort from it in my home after my father's death. Unfortunately, no matter what wall I hung it on or how I balanced the small counter weights, I have never been able to get it to work consistently. It would tick for a minute or two before stopping, and so it now hung silent on my wall.

January 2008 would have been my father's 71st birthday, and the Saturday morning following his birthday as I closed the back door from letting the dogs in, "his" clock started to move. Thinking that the movement was prompted by closing the door a little hard to keep the cold out, and it was on the same wall as the clock, I waited for it to stop moving. When it didn't, I smiled and said with a laugh, "Hi Dad." As I continued to laugh with tears in my eyes, the phone rang and still laughing I answered it.

It was my uncle, my father's twin brother. He asked what I was laughing about, and when I told him about the clock, we both became very emotional. I changed the subject and we talked for another 45 minutes before I hung up the phone.

I didn't tell him that the clock continued to work the entire time we were on the phone. I didn't let him know that I was talking through tears, and that my occasional silence and hesitation when answering his questions about how I'd been coping since my father's death was not because I was searching for words, but because I was trying to hold back the sobs. Later, I wouldn't tell him that the clock stopped working the second I hung up the phone and it hasn't worked since.

I'd like to think that it was my father, there to have a birthday laugh and conversation with his brother. Twins still bound together by love, across time and space.

Recently when I attended a memorial service for my aunt, his younger sister, we sang her favorite song at the end of the service. "Let There Be Peace On Earth," was a song she would sing and play on the piano when her children were young and "getting along" like all siblings close in age can at times. There is a line in the chorus that says "Let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony." I had forgotten about that line and when we reached it in the song I saw, as clear as if they had been right in front of me, a vision of my father with his sister walking on a path lined with trees in the sunshine.

I have no doubt that what I saw was a glimpse of the two of them, perhaps comforting me, comforting others who may have seen the same vision. Regardless of whether or not my Rock Clock works again, I know that my father is with me at times. It is comforting.

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