Her watch stopped at 6:14

Dear Delyara, I repair watches for a living, but I cannot repair my wife’s. It stopped at 6:14 on the morning she died. I know the mechanism is simple. The mainspring broke. I have replaced thousands of them. Her watch sits on my workbench between tools I inherited from my grandfather, and every day I move it aside to repair someone else’s time. Customers bring me wedding watches, retirement watches, cheap watches that fell in sinks. I return each one ticking. My daughter says keeping her mother’s watch broken is unhealthy. Perhaps she is right. Tonight, after closing the shop, I opened the case and placed the new spring beside it. My hands would not continue. If I repair it, the hands will move past 6:14. Tomorrow will become 6:15, then 6:16, as if the morning had not divided our lives. I closed the case again. I am a watchmaker afraid of one working watch because it would prove that time continued even when she did not.