Clocks.

My father has this old, mantle clock. It’s been in my family for a long time– perhaps all its life. Dad says it’s 150 years old.

I remember it in pieces when I was younger, then it was refinished and reassembled some time when I was around 12. From that time foreword, it was the main clock in our living room. I got very familiar with its half-hour and hourly chimes– and it’s slightly eccentric tick-TOCK.

Well, earlier this year, the main spring finally broke. Dad took it to get fixed, but the new spring wasn’t quite right and the clock ran fast. And the spring affected the mechanism so that the pendulum couldn’t be lowered enough to slow it down.

So it needed to have the mechanism physically moved upwards in the housing. Which sort of worked for a time– until it didn’t. Now the clock won’t run.

Dad would still love for the clock to work, but he’s given up on it.

Ironically the clock is a perfect metaphor for my dad and his cancer treatments.

His chemo has stopped working and the cancer is spreading. This was the last of the chemo options for him– so now he’s done. No more chemo.

The estimates are for 4-6 months at this point.

We knew this day was coming, and in some ways it’s a miracle the one chemo worked as long as it did. It just doesn’t make the situation any easier.