One Beautiful Day After Another
The morning starts out in the kitchen with the Wife making waffles for the Kid as I scramble around her putting his lunch together. I hear Wife stifle a sob, then another, and another – so I come up behind her, wrap my arm around her belly and lay my head on her back.
“It’s one beautiful day after another,” she sobs. “He would have loved this.”
Da was a playboy in the literal sense of the word: he loved to play. On days like this he would be outside tending his garden or in the car driving to one of his favorite restaurants in Lancaster County. Although he was 80, Da moved in a way that you could tell that in his mind he was still in his twenties.
As I get older I realize that some old people aren’t really “old”: they are a young person trapped in an old person’s body – and that’s exactly what Da was. Da ignored aging as much as possible; only the failures of his body betrayed his physical age. Had medicine kept his body going, Da would have lived forever as active as any man in his twenties or thirties.
But the body betrayed him one final time, and now he’s gone.
The Kid padded into the kitchen, a concerned look on his face. He came up to the Wife.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, honey, I’m okay. I’m just making your breakfast.”
“I thought I heard crying.”
“I wasn’t crying,” she lied – I’m not exactly sure why.
The Kid looked at me and my expression told him exactly what I wanted to: Yes son, she’s crying but she will be okay. Don’t push her.
He understood with a nod and took the tray with his breakfast out of the room.
Just one more complex interaction as life continues onward.
