painful in their beauty 2

When I was very young, yet old enough to be relatively conscious (9-11yrs), I recall several run-ins with a very old, friend-less, family-less, senile man. He used to shuffle his flat shoes as he walked, and drool profusely. I no longer remember his name, and am not sure I ever knew it to begin with, but his face on a particular freezing and grey afternoon is one of my most haunting memories…

We first met in a bomb shelter…the ancient basement of the old catholic school that was used as a resale store. I was standing in a corner, underneath the soft white glow of a barred window high up in the wall (a window that was actually under the surface of the land, in a small hole with another set of bars at surface level to keep people from falling in). I was flipping through old records of classical music in search of something interesting. There were many boxes crammed into that corner, and I was flanked by racks of musty basement smelling clothes. The rest of the room was a large sea of antique bottles, knick nacks, old appliances, and other such necessities. Adjacent to that room were seven others, all similar… and at that age and height I could easily dissapear among the cast away ruins of previous eras, and consequentially loved it down there. Aside from the resale section of the basement, the place was a labyrinth. So anyhow, there I stood, next to Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and the Sunny Gospel Quartet. The old man shuffled over to me as I was browsing and asked me, very slowly, and not without a long line of drool, what I was "doin." And so we conversed for several minutes, until I was on my way. I said goodbye. Every time I saw him around town after that, shuffling through the snow or trying slowly to climb the long stairs up the bluffs, I would stop and say hello. His eyes would light up with a certain appreciation that I found very satisfying when I acknowledged him. Nobody else in town ever noticed him, I think.

The last time I saw him was during a downtown christmas festival. It was a day of heavy snow. I remember the sky being very large, and the city streets crushed beneath it. All was white and grey and cold. People were everywhere, in black coats with urgent buisness on their minds, and I had a small box that I had bought from a vendor that had chocolote covered pretzels in it, a little toy, as well as some other sweets and such. I had planned on taking this little delicately wrapped treasure chest home to eat. It was in the shape of a small christmas present, with a little bow on top….and as I walked down the sidewalk towards my house, I saw my old friend approaching. I said hello, as I always had, looked at the box in my hands, and said (even though it really wasn’t the case) "Here, I got this for you." And handed the little present to him. He took it and his eyes reddend, and he began to cry. Snot and drool ran from his face… his hands shook as he held the little box tight, and he looked lovingly at me with old wet eyes and said "Thank you for being so wonderful." It’s really the only thing I remember him saying, and he said it coherently. He died the very next day… but I still hear him saying that through broken tearful gasps, over, and over, and over…