We always think there will be more time

It’s been a bad week. The kind of week where grief arrives in layers and ordinary life keeps demanding things from you anyway. On Friday, my dad died. And somehow, in the middle of preparing for a funeral visitation, a neighbor we have barely spoken to in eight years decided this was the right moment to cut down the trees separating our properties without even discussing it with us first. The trees were ours! They sat on our property. They were old privets we inherited with the house, and one of them held an active catbird nest. What followed involved police reports, lawyers, and a surveyor who will cost another thousand dollars just to formally prove where our own land begins and ends. It all feels exhausting and absurd. Death paperwork. Property disputes. Bills that need to be paid all before grief has even had a chance to settle.

So, when I walked into a local watch shop today before heading off to cancel my dad’s phone, internet, and landline accounts, I was not expecting much from the day. My dad used to joke that we had “Pajka luck,” and to him, that mostly meant bad luck. I never really believed that. Life is hard sometimes, but I have always thought of myself as pretty lucky. I had good parents. I was loved. Even in difficult moments, things have had a way of working out even if it wasn’t necessarily the way that I thought it would. Of course, hindsight lets us reinterpret our own stories. 

My dad was 87 when he died, and despite the difficult ending, he believed he had lived a beautiful life. We said everything we needed to say to each other. That matters more than people realize until they no longer have the chance. Still, the final months were difficult. There were hospital stays, a heart valve replacement, rehab that often felt more dehumanizing than healing, and an assisted living facility that cost more than eight thousand dollars a month yet somehow still failed at the most basic responsibilities. After two falls, I found him lying on the floor after his third fall and after he had been on the floor for two hours. I pulled the emergency cord in his room and no one came. I remember standing there stunned, realizing how strange it is that people spend their entire lives preparing financially for old age only to discover that money cannot guarantee dignity, care, or safety. After another hospitalization, I arranged for him to move somewhere I hoped was better. I signed more paperwork, paid another enormous deposit, and convinced myself there would still be enough time for him to settle into a new place. But sometimes we simply run out of time. Dad moved from the hospital into the new assisted living with hospice and only lived two hours before I received a phone call. Many people had shared that Dad was probably waiting for the “right time” when I could step away and he wouldn’t have to pass in front of me. 

Near the end of his life, Dad kept repeating a phrase. We always think there will be more time. He said it casually sometimes, almost as an observation about human nature, but I think he understood it was something he was still struggling to accept. We build our lives around the assumption of later. Later we will make the trip. Later we will ask the questions. Later we will organize the papers, repair the relationship, take the photo, sit down for the conversation, wear the good watch. We move through life believing time is renewable until suddenly it isn’t.

This week, while sorting through drawers full of paperwork and photographs, I found several of my dad’s old watches tucked beneath his high school yearbook and my parents’ wedding pictures. The drawer smelled exactly like my parents’ house, like old paper and dust and time itself. One watch immediately caught my attention. It was a 1967 Bulova Accutron Astronaut, an M7. I did not know much about it except that it looked impossibly futuristic in that distinctly mid-century way. The watch had belonged to an era when people genuinely believed the future would be bright and sleek and full of possibility. Dad loved old science fiction and this watch feels a bit like that. He appreciated objects built to last.

In recent years, though, his skin had become so fragile that he could barely wear watches anymore. Even a pillowcase brushing against his arm could tear his skin. I eventually found him a cheap silicone slap-band watch that he loved because it did not hurt his wrist. At one point, he laughed and told me I had “given him a little time back.” Like so many things he said, I know he meant more than the literal words.

Dad always wore his watch with the face turned inward on his wrist, something he may have picked up while serving in the Air Force around airplanes and machinery. As a child, I thought that was simply how watches were worn. After finding the old Accutron, I decided to take it into a local watch shop to see whether anyone still carried the special battery it needed. The owner warned me not to expect much. Watches like this usually require extensive restoration before they run again, and repairs for a watch like this can cost more than fifteen hundred dollars because the parts are so rare.

Then he installed the battery and we waited. The shopkeeper smiled as the watch immediately came back to life.

The owner looked genuinely surprised. He told me he almost never sees one start working again so easily after sitting unused for years. I stood there holding this small object my father had once worn, this watch that had survived decades tucked away in a drawer, and all I could think about was Dad’s words. We always think there will be more time.

That phrase has followed me everywhere this week. I thought there would be more time for him to settle into the new assisted living place. More time to hear his stories again. More time to ask questions about the Air Force years or my grandparents or all the small details that vanish when someone dies. More time to watch him laugh and tell bad jokes. More time for ordinary afternoons that never seem important until they are gone forever.

Ever since I was little, Dad and I talked about how if one of us died first, we would somehow send signs back to the other one. A few days after he died, my reddest roses suddenly bloomed. Dad loved red! And usually, my red plants aren't quite in bloom at this time of year. 

Then, after I finished writing his obituary, I walked into my bathroom and saw that my Phal Haur Jin Princess (Phalaenopsis) orchid, which has not bloomed in five years, was flowering again. I cannot prove these are signs that meant anything, but I also cannot disprove that.

And now there was this watch. This object designed to measure time somehow becoming a reminder of how little control we actually have over it. Standing in that little shop, exhausted from grief and paperwork and all the earthly responsibilities that follow death, I found myself smiling for the first time in days because I could almost hear my father saying We always think there will be more time in the hum of the tuning fork in the piece on my wrist. I guess Dad gave me back a bit of time today. 

Astronaut Leroy Cooper wearing the Accutron Astronaut. 

During the 1963 Mercury-Atlas 9 mission, astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. wore a Bulova Accutron Astronaut aboard Faith 7 as he completed 22 orbits around Earth. When critical onboard systems failed during re-entry, Cooper relied on the Accutron’s precision timing to manually guide the capsule safely home. He later credited the watch with helping save his life, giving new meaning to the idea that just the right watch can give you more time.