Post 3744 - Is it? Or Isn't It?

After my father died in 2010, my sisters and my mother, and I think even Patricia, all told me that they wanted me to have his watch. I accepted it with some humility. I already had a watch. Why need another?

That summer, the battery gave out on the first watch, so I put on Dad's, and have barely taken it off since.

Over the years I have had to change the battery a few times, which is no big deal. But in 2012, or maybe 2013, the watch stopped working. I thought it might be the battery, but it wasn't. The mechanism, the inner workings, had broken. It would cost me... $75 or so to fix it. I agreed. It was my father's watch, dammit, and I would not let it end up in a drawer to languish.

Last week, during my vacation, the strap on my wrist watch broke. Nothing bad happened, other than the strap being broken.

So, tonight, after work, we went to the Halifax Shopping Centre to the Halifax Watch Company, and presented my watch, telling the young woman therein (named Pam) that I needed a new strap, and likely new pins to hold the strap in place. She had a strap that looked nearly identical to the broken one, and could supply stronger, thicker pins to hold the strap in place. She checked the battery for me and noted that it was nearly depleted. I told her to put a new battery in there.

Total cost was over $30.

This got me to thinking.

Is this still my father's watch? The only original piece to the watch would be the face of it, I guess. Maybe the back plate. But everything else -- the strap, the pins, the battery, the innards -- is new, or newly-replaced.

Should I still be so slavishly devoted to keeping this watch, which is sort of a new watch now? Would my dad regard it as his own if he were still alive and asked to see it?

I don't know. I don't know if this is my dad's watch any more. It is still a great watch. A Bulova that someone must have given Dad at some point because there is no way he would have spent the few hundred dollars to buy the thing. He would have been more of a Timex guy.

What are your thoughts on this? Am I still wearing my dad's watch, or not?

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy