The Watch That Keeps on Ticking

One of the first quirky things I noticed about the handsome new psychologist we had hired was the way his watch was placed on his left wrist, face turning inwards. I quietly asked him about this one afternoon as we were in between clients, and he calmly told me: "Time with each client is precious. I never want any one of them to feel the constraints of time. If I am seen looking at my watch, it cheapens the session. Clients need to feel that they are in sacred space. The way I wear my watch allows me the opportunity to surreptitiously check the time without anyone feeling slighted.”

All I could think of was the words of a wonderful professor I had in graduate school who consistently reminded us that the necessary ingredient for successful therapy was not coming up with a diagnosis or writing a detailed treatment plan or providing appropriate medications. Rather, it was securing this fundamental belief, which is “Caring is curing.”

This man, Dr. Daniel James Hoy, lived that credo instinctively.

As I looked into his deep blue eyes, the shape of the room began to change. And we
were encircled by the light of the late morning sun, and it was then these two shadows met for the first time.

I held my body steady, but inside I was shaking.

He was fresh water tossed onto my soul.

One late summer morning, Dan and I were sitting next to each other at an
administrative meeting. Dan nudged me and whispered, "My watch stopped working. And I have a slew of clients this afternoon. What the hell am I going to do?” I gave him a meek shrug, and before the meeting ended, I pretended to have to use the bathroom, but instead, I skedaddled over to CVS - two blocks down - and bought a cheap Timex for fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. I ran back to the office and began running up the stairs, two at a time, and just as he was ushering in his noon-time appointment, I handed him the watch. His reaction was to give me a reverential nod to all we were becoming.

The intangible and fixed galaxy of our lives took a turn after the bestowing of the watch. It became a talisman for us.

We were married six months later.

Our life together was the most private exchanging of souls that can be imagined. We burned up with desire to know each other more and more as the years went by. To be loved and to love this deeply was a commitment like no other. Unbidden, unexpected, this gift of love was the cathedral to our souls.

The first year we were married, we bought a lakeside cottage that offered us respite
from our demanding jobs as therapists. Our most sacred times were spent swimming, kayaking, and reading on our dock at Waterman Lake. Waterman Lake became our Paris. Through it all, Dan never went a day without wearing that watch.

One hot summer day, as we were kayaking together, Dan directed me to follow him into a shallow enclave. We got out of our kayaks and walked uphill towards an empty meadow. He told me: “Now that we are in this meadow, Ellen, watch the sodden bees zig-zag away loaded down in a bee line with their pollen.” I did. It was fascinating! I was so excited!

He next guided me to an adjacent meadow.

“Watch the bee line of those bees- where the two lines meet will be the hive.”
And sure enough, we followed the bee line, and there was the hive! I hugged him so enthusiastically that we toppled over, me on top of him, laughing hysterically.

What he said as we lay together in that meadow will forever be seared into my memory bank: “We all rush to different meadows, Ellen, carrying our pollen, our burdens, our joys to slanted angles. But our angles were unique, dear girl.. Our angles intersected with love. The whole landscape of our lives loomed absolute. Before we were born, we knew each other. And loved each other.”

Every year with Dan, I found myself moving forward and inward to an inextinguishable flame of an authentic and pure existence.

Over the Fourth of July weekend in 2011, Dan and I were cocooned together on the
dock, reading and snacking on pretzels and cheese. I was engrossed in a Stieg Larsson novel and jumped out of my skin when I suddenly felt Dan’s fingers gently touch my thigh. He was kneeling next to me and had his watch in his hands, holding it up to me for inspection. He stated woefully, “Ellen, the Timex watch stopped! It stopped!”

Before I could say a word or even acknowledge his feeling of loss, he climbed off the dock and ambled over to his kayak, retrieving something. As he returned, walking waist-deep in the water, he was holding a hammer, gumming two nails perched inside his mouth. (Dan may have been one of the few individuals on the planet Earth who kept a hammer and nails in his kayak)

Wordlessly and with deep concentration, Dan affixed one of the straps of the watch to the side of the dock and began to hammer it into place. He did the same with the other strap. When he was done hammering, he looked up at me and said, “Time stood still the first time I laid eyes on you. Our love will stand the test of time. It is eternal.”

I can picture him now: his thinning hair plastered to his head, the bandage on his upper back from skin cancer surgery, his old orange swimming trunks falling low, and his eyes beseechingly full of crazed love. I had no option but to jump in and hug him.

During the pandemic, we sold our lakeside cottage and retired to a smaller home on the shore.

When my beloved Daniel James died in 2024, all the colors of the universe faded to black. Being his wife, his lover, his best friend allowed me to breathe in the oxygen of utopian love. I was detonated by his passing away - the loss like a nuclear explosion.

I found myself begging him to send me a sign the was okay. And it came to me last week.

I finally had the courage to return to our lakeside home.

No one was around, so I felt at ease walking down the pebbled path to the dock to soak in the full range of emotions privately.

I felt him there, his arm steady around my waist, heard him whistle and hoot, diving off the dock into the lake, recalled all the grandkids fishing with him off this dock and shrieking with glee at each caught fish.

Dan was without a doubt the most romantic man who ever lived. He wrote to me daily. He lavished me with endless words and gestures of love. Because of this, I have forgotten some of them - but they continue to pop up to grab at my heart.

I felt him with me now, holding this new existence we are living together, moment by moment. Perhaps death has allowed me to let go of the outer shape of things - one’s truest beauty is revealed in the inner self, the spirit. And I have never loved Daniel James more than I do at this moment on our dock. His beauty and light are brighter than ever.

I sat down cross-legged on the dock and rested my left hand against the side of the
dock, inadvertently touching a ragged, leathery thing and jolted upright.

Shaking, trembling wildly, excitedly, I jumped off the side and began crying out loud: "Oh my God, Dan! There you are! There you are! The watch! The watch! Dan! I am here with you! I love you!”

Love is a gob-smacking miracle.

As I stood waist-deep in Waterman Lake, fingering the straps of an old watch, I am
aware of the reality that time truly did stand still that early summer day in 1998 when I handed that beautiful man a cheap Timex watch.

And our love keeps on ticking. A sash of holiness wraps itself around me.

The sign I had been begging Dan to send to me has been received.

Finally, I am at home within myself.

The lexicographical commentary on timeless love is found within the confines of the human heart. Look at your loved ones and tell them you love them. It is all that matters. Trust me on this. Every small gesture of love matters.

Ellen McCann Hoy is a retired grief and trauma clinician who lives by the shore of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. Early mornings will find her walking there, ruminating over how best to manage her decades-long addiction to reading to include carving out time for eating and sleeping. The dominating force in her life has been loving her kids, her grandkids, and her husband. His recent death has prompted an onslaught of unmoored feelings of agony as well as undulating memories of love. This essay freeze-frames a tender gesture that eclipses time.