The Cockpit Clock
Updated: Sep 7
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”John 11:25
John was 101. Every night he still said goodnight to Con, his wife of sixty-six years.
The small cockpit clock had come from an aircraft he serviced during the war. He gave it to her as a Christmas present in 1947. She kept it on her bedside table for the rest of their life together. After she died, during a house move, the clock stopped.
When it was repaired and began to tick again, John brushed tears from his eyes. “That’s going to remind me of Con all the time,” he said.
Some objects do more than tell the time. They keep company. When this clock spoke again, the room was not empty in the same way. It could not bring Con back. It could hold her place in the day: morning and night, as her bedside table once did.
Jesus knew the weight of a room after someone had gone. He stood outside the tomb of his friend. He promised that death is not the last word. That promise is the resurrection: God will raise the dead, and those we love will live. A clock can start again in this life. In God’s future, the person we miss will live again, not only as a memory.
At Mass we pray for the dead. We trust them to Christ, who has already passed through death. We do not pretend that grief is small. We say that love is not wasted, and that God has not finished with the people we still greet in the dark.
The clock ticks again. It reminds John of Con. It also reminds us that time is held by God. One day what death has stopped will live, and will not stop again.