The Christmas Clock

In the winter of 2014, my grandmother, Elena, who was more of a mother to me than my own, passed away in a small hospice room in rural Vermont. She had been diagnosed with a sudden and aggressive form of anemia, and within weeks, her body gave up. My two-year-old daughter, Lily, who had always been Elena’s joy, refused to go near her in the hospital. She would cling to me, whimpering, her tiny hands covering her eyes. Elena, in a moment of clarity, whispered to me, ‘I will watch over her when you can’t.’

The next day, as we met with the hospice nurse, my uncle burst in shouting that Elena’s heart had stopped. We rushed to her room, and I saw the flatline on the monitor. My father, desperate, begged her to come back, to say goodbye. As we stood weeping around her bed, the monitor suddenly showed a heartbeat, and her eyes fluttered open. We told her we loved her, and then she was gone. Elena was a devoted keeper of tradition, and above all, she loved Christmas. She had always spent the season with Lily, who called her ‘Nana.’

A few days before Christmas, I was working a night shift at the local clinic, and my husband was home with Lily. The weather was brutal, a blizzard howling outside. At 2:15 AM, I felt a sudden chill, and my phone buzzed. It was my husband, panicked. Lily was standing in her crib, pointing at the corner of the room, saying ‘Nana is there.’ She described Elena wearing her favorite red sweater, the one she always wore on Christmas Eve. I told him to keep calm, but my own heart raced.

At 4:00 AM, the hospital’s intercom crackled, and an unfamiliar voice called me to the ER. I found a patient who had been in a car accident, an elderly woman with the same name as my grandmother, but that wasn’t what made me freeze. On the woman’s wrist was a silver bracelet that I had given Elena years ago, engraved with ‘Nana’s Little Star.’ I was sure it had been buried with her. I asked the nurse where she got it, but she said the patient arrived with it, and the patient was unconscious.

As I drove home in the snowstorm, the roads were treacherous. I saw a figure standing at the side of the road, waving frantically. It was a woman in a red coat, and when I stopped, I recognized her as Elena, or rather, her ghost. She pointed to a tree ahead, where my car would have skidded off the road. I swerved, missing a deadly plunge into a ravine. When I looked back, she was gone.

At home, Lily was awake, sitting on the floor, playing with a small music box that Elena had given her. The box played a haunting melody, and as it wound down, Lily said, ‘Nana says the clock is wrong.’ I looked at the wall clock; it had stopped at 2:15 AM. I wound it, and it began ticking again, but the second hand moved backward.

On Christmas Eve, we set a place for Elena at the table, as was our tradition. When the clock struck midnight, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and I heard Elena’s voice, soft and distant: ‘I said I’d watch over her. I always keep my promise.’ I turned, and for a split second, I saw her reflection in the window, smiling, holding Lily’s hand. Lily looked up and waved, saying ‘Bye, Nana.’ The clock chimed twelve times, and then stopped. It has never worked since.

Every Christmas, I find a small red ornament on our tree that I didn’t put there, and Lily will look at the empty corner and say, ‘Nana is here.’ I know she is. And when I look at that stopped clock, I understand that some promises are stronger than death.