************
Continued from yesterday
My grandparents home was by no means a large house. However, it was the only two story house that I can recall in the neighborhood. It had a large porch that went nearly the full width of the front. As I opened the front door and came into the living room, grandpa’s faded red padded armchair was straight ahead in a corner at the far wall. The chair and grandpa faced the oilburner heatingstove. The stove had a small door with a round glass porthole through which he could watch the fire. Grandpa sat, smoldering pipe drooping from his mouth and watched the fire. Or possibly he was asleep. He slept with his eyes open so it was difficult to know. He also had dementia so maybe he had no more awareness than a manikin.
He was around six foot tall and so thin he had to stand twice to cast a shadow. He was bald with a gray fringed around the edges and a few whisps of hair on top that refused to admit defeat. His sunken eyes and cheeks framed a hawknose. Beneath that nose was a glorieous mustache that completely hid his mouth. The mustache was yellowed from too many decades of tobacco smoke.
It’s hard to imagine him as the younger muscular man he once was. Farmer, beekeeper, railroad worker, musician, leatherworker, welldigger, husband, and father of nine children; are all discriptors of the man he once was. All I could see through my youthful eyes was a fading leathery husk of a man.
TO BE CONTINUED
We went to Wal-Mart to get my prescription via the curbside pickup. But though I tried repeatedly, the pharmacy never answered. I had also scheduled groceries for pickup … they at least were ready. We left with the groceries because there was ice cream that I didn’t want to melt.
Somehow, I missed putting bacon on the grocery list. Now I have two reasons to return to Wal-Mart tomorrow.
************
©2021 Thomas E Williams
Tom and Ella Journal 