My father grew up in humble surroundings as a Depression-era kid. He was the first in our family to graduate college, and then he joined the Air Force and became a fighter pilot.
When he was posted to Germany as a junior officer in the late 1950s, he splurged and bought himself a Rolex. He was so proud of that watch. Later, while serving in Vietnam, he had a routine before he took off on each of his more than 150 missions, just in case he didn’t return. He would take off his wedding ring and his Rolex, put them in his locker and say to himself: “They can have me, but they can’t have these.”
Once, while back in the States to train on a new plane, he and my mother watched as I tried my 4-year-old best to swim in an apartment pool. Eventually, my head dipped below the water again and again while I struggled for air in the deep end, and my mother screamed for my father to save me. Ever the cool-headed pilot, he took out his wallet, removed his Rolex and jumped in — fully clothed, shoes and all — to save me.
That’s how much he valued that watch.
Fast forward several decades to his final years. Dad began to lose his cognitive abilities. He forgot how to buckle his belt. He forgot how to make his morning coffee. Words began to elude him mid-sentence. One day, before leaving the house, he decided to take off his Rolex and hide it to keep it safe.
He never saw it again.
We turned the house upside down, digging through drawers, looking between couch cushions, checking out all the usual spaces your stuff goes to hide. Even as he lay dying in a hospital bed in late 2018, I tried and tried to find that watch. It broke my heart that I failed to put it back in his hands.
The hunt for the Rolex continued in the years that followed. It became a quest. Every time I returned to Las Vegas to visit my mother, I poked around and checked jacket pockets and pants pockets before we donated them to Goodwill. More rooting around in closets and emptying boxes.
Still no luck.
Eventually, without giving up hope entirely, I concluded that there were three likely possibilities: One, my father picked a really good hiding place. Two, the watch was hidden among newspapers and got tossed out with the recycling. Three, someone — I had no suspects — walked away with the watch.
My mother passed away last September, nearly six years after my father died. By November, my sister and I began cleaning out the house our family has called home since 1969. We tackled closets. We removed furniture. We hauled out boxes of clothes to donate.
Before each run to Goodwill, we dutifully checked pockets, drawers and bags — just in case.
We turned our attention to the kitchen, the scene of so many family photos, holiday meals and everyday life. On the counter for probably 30 years stood a small, framed photo of my father, holding our old black poodle, Missy. He had a hint of a smile; her paws were on his chest. His left arm held Missy, and his Rolex peeked out from his sweater.
Out came the old dishes, coffee cups, bowls and glasses, and we boxed them up for donation. Then the cabinets were empty. But for my partner, Deb, there was more work to be done; the 50-year-old shelf paper lining the cabinets just had to go. I knew better than to try to talk her out of it, so I sat at the dining table nearby, probably reading Colorado Sun emails on my computer.
She rolled up the disintegrating paper, shelf by shelf. She dragged over a chair to stand on so she could reach the upper cabinet we had used the most, just above the countertop where the photo of my dad rested.
Deb gasped, hopped down from the chair and rushed over to me.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked.
My eyes widened and filled with tears as I saw what she had found, tucked in a corner.
She put the Rolex into my hands and we hugged. I wound the watch, and it began ticking back to life as I slipped it onto my wrist. I can’t adequately describe the feeling knowing that the last wrist that wore it was my father’s. It felt like getting a piece of him back.
The death of my parents and the discovery of the Rolex have prompted me to see possessions through a different lens.
My parents both grew up poor during the Depression — my mother often spoke of how she would go out to the forest as a girl to collect wood for their stove while my grandfather was away fighting in World War II. I think it brought them comfort to be surrounded by their stuff. My sister and I pleaded with our mother to help us sort through her things in the years before she passed, but she could not bring herself to do it.
“You guys can just decide after I’m gone,” she often said.
That’s where we are today. And it makes me sad to realize that so many things that seemed precious to her have little or no meaning to me or my sister. Polyester pantsuits from the 1970s? Donate. Antique butter churn? Give to a nephew. On and on.
If there’s a spectrum of value for belongings, the needle had long ago swung from precious to burden for most of her stuff. In fact, some of her nice things, including beautiful midcentury modern teak tables my parents had brought back from Germany along with baby me, had wound up covered with boxes, pictures or an old TV. Clearing away the clutter revealed a few gems like that, although nothing topped the Rolex in terms of sentimental value.
There are very few things, the Rolex among them, that are so precious to me now that I would never part with them. Most belongings fall into another category, and I am working hard to evaluate my own things and give away as much as possible.
I suppose if we are fortunate enough to have the resources, a life’s worth of possessions can sneak up and overwhelm you. Just how many T-shirts and socks does one guy need? Just today, I donated a bookshelf and chest of drawers that I painted for my kids’ bedroom when they were toddlers. A couple weeks ago, a delighted young family carried off our old foosball table, which brought us joy back in the day but was now mostly just in the way. I was thrilled to think of kids playing with the table again.
I am hoping to limit the pile of my life’s belongings that my own kids will have to sort through one day, and it’s a slow process. It can be hard to let go. What do I do with newspaper clippings of my stories from 40 years ago? Anyone want some old track trophies? Where does each thing fall on the spectrum?
One decision is easy, and it’s already made. I will leave my kids the one thing I thought I might never see again: an old Rolex, still ticking and keeping perfect time.
