My brother and I were in the hospital room when she took her last breath. We had stayed because the last nurse that came in to take her vitals said they were so faint, they weren’t even registering on the meters, and that it wouldn’t be long now. The oxygen mask was still over her nose and mouth, but her breaths were getting farther apart and more faint, suggesting that she was hovering on a precipice between life and death. Other relatives had come and gone that day to see her, knowing the end was probably near. She hadn’t appeared to be conscious then, and we weren’t sure of how much she was aware, or how much she could hear. The last of her other visitors had left about half an hour before.

      Now the two of us sat, not wanting to leave her alone. There was another breath, then a long pause, followed by one last one, and no more came. I went and got the nurse and told her I thought it was all over. She came and confirmed it.

     It’s a strange moment then, when something big happens that changes the way all others in your near world live and no one else yet knows about a monumental event. No one’s world is disrupted yet, so for them, everything remains the same, but as soon as you pick up that phone, it will start a ball rolling that can’t be turned back and everyone’s world will be forever changed. In what seems that surreal frozen moment, it’s almost like nothing yet is different, and it won’t be until you make that announcement call, but you know it will be as soon as you act. It’s huge and it seems to all depend on you.

     She was the last survivor of the six girls in my mother’s family. At 95-years-old, this aunt was also the one with the most longevity. Still, it’s always hard to know a loved one will no longer be an active part of your life. Especially when, for every day that you have lived, this person has been on this earth, available. And no matter where in the world you are, there’s still comfort in knowing this dear one is in it too.

     Soon came the monumental task of clearing her house. It had been not only her house, but the house in which my mother and her five sisters had grown up. The same one my grandfather had built when he emigrated from Sweden and worked to bring my grandmother and the family over. They all lived and grew there; the girls married and left home, all but her. She always lived there, even after my grandparents died and for the next 50 plus years until her own death on this cold December day in that hospital room when she departed this life the night before Christmas Eve day.

     From a large, two-story, six bedroom house, one can’t keep everything. What to treat with reverence, what to sacrifice, give away or throw away were the questions. What keepsakes for each relative to memorialize and cherish throughout their lives were viable considerations. Those relatives who cared to, came in and made their choices. What should I choose? I wanted something that bore some connection with the people who had lived there and was involved in contributing to the richness of their warmth and life; something that perhaps every loved one who ever spent time there, got use of in some way, maybe looked at or touched, that was a vital part of their time there.

     I decided on the old, black Ingram clock on the mantle. It had been there from my earliest memory, through each happy Christmas when my grandparents were still alive, and when all the relatives gathered there as well as the ones who came over from Sweden one Christmas. The eyes of them all had fallen upon its silvery face many times. And how many times had I seen my grandparents and various aunts open its delicate round door to wind it with the key to crank it up for  the next few days?  It was indeed a part of their lives, throughout myriad years, even way before I was born.

     Many an evening I had lain in bed upstairs in that house, spending the night at the grandparents’ and clearly heard it chime out the time each hour and half hour. On the hour when it counted them out, I could know what time it was, even without seeing it. Some people might think it was a bit annoying—that chiming when they are trying to sleep, but to me, it was a comforting sound because I was there among loved ones in a place I so enjoyed being.

     So I gave the old clock a new home on my own mantle. I had to take it to a clock shop to restore it and make it functional again, but it was well worth the $100 plus. A small price to pay for the privilege of being able to look upon the face of something my many relatives, now gone, had all looked upon many times a day. And what a joy again to hear the heralding of that familiar chime that I so lovingly remember; the same that my grandparents heard for so many of their years as it rang out from its place on their mantle. It still brings me comfort, realizing it was the same chime I heard as a little girl. It’s like a bridge to an era it allows me to reclaim, bringing me back to another place in time, in a way. Not many clocks can do that. It’s truly a gift of time.