Old Man Joe

He watched from a park bench. Old men were allowed to sit on park benches, but only if they had a dog with them or grandchildren to call their name (lest he is marked a sexual predator by mothers everywhere). He had neither. It made him uncomfortable, but he couldn’t help himself. He had never married. His brothers and sister were dead. He was too old to have a mother and father still around. Being the odd-ball uncle to nieces and nephews who’d forgotten him was no longer appealing. He might even be a great-uncle, but he’d never know the names or faces of those children. 

For all intent and purposes, he was alone. He had no church community to ease the hole in his life. He had no wish for one either. The last thing he wanted to do was pretend to be religious. Churches had a way of forcing its elderly into significant roles, like Deacon, or something, because old folks are somehow closer to God. The last thing he needed was yet another excuse for him to be flung into Hell. Leading a flock of Christians astray due to his indifference to God was not on his bucket list. 

Hell was a concept he believed in deeply. He had been in WWII and fought long and hard in France. He wasn’t sure how many Nazis he’d shot dead versus merely injured, but he knew it had to be in the double digits, and murder was a sin no matter how or why it was committed. War was Hell. Hell would be waiting for him when he died. 

The old man watched as a small boy with blonde curls, pale skin, blue jeans, and a t-shirt, shouted at the top of his lungs from the highest perch he could climb on the playground. It was a war cry announcing the new game the kids were to start playing: The Floor is Lava! The dogless man loved watching the kids play this game. The arguments over who had touched the ground long enough to be burned alive were hilarious entertainment for one such as he. 

Occasionally he would sit back and close his eyes and in his mind, he was transformed back into a child and was joining in their fun. His brothers were there and his sister was calling out for them to stop running across the top of the monkey bars. He would smile and feel warmth for the first time in what felt like years, only to frown when his eyes opened and he was met with the reality that they were all gone. He was the last one left. He had no legacy to carry on after him. Just regular old Joe with nothing special to his name and no one to leave behind. His funeral would be empty and sad. He tried not to care, but it burned something nasty in his chest. 

His eyes followed a group of girls playing tag in the field beside the swings. Earlier they had been trying to out-do each other, see who could jump the furthest while swinging the highest. One girl, he heard her mother call Sally, had gotten hurt after jumping. From afar his old eyes analyzed the injury. It swelled up rather fast, and the girl could hardly put pressure on it. Most likely broken. Sally was going to have a rough few days of pain ahead of her. He felt bad. He wanted to help in some way, but he didn’t want to be creepy. After all, he’d watched Sally grow up in some way. He’d been coming to this park to sit on this bench longer that the little girl had been alive, and this was her third summer spending her days playing on these swings. He felt like he owed her some kind of wisdom or support. A surrogate grandfather who she’d never met or spoken to before. 

Maybe he was going crazy. 

He closed his eyes again. In his mind he was brave and walked over to Sally’s mother an offered her a hand at carrying her daughter back to the car and helped set them off to the hospital ER with well wished and a promised to see her again soon. In his mind, he went out of his way to buy the young girl a teddy bear that she could hug while she dealt with her pain. In his mind, Sally’s mom was grateful and not fearful of him. She invited him over for dinner as a thank you and suddenly he was just as integrated into their lives and they were in his.  

Crazy? Maybe. Warm? Definitely. 

When he looked again, Sally and her mother were long gone. The other girls were still playing tag. The boys were arguing over what sections of the playground had been consumed by lava and what hadn’t. The parents were watching from afar, cellphones out, and the occasional call for their child to be careful. Didn’t they know how precious this time was? Didn’t they realize that the innocence here would be gone in a flash and the lone survivor of the family might appreciate some photos and reminders of the days they weren’t alone? He wanted those photos more than anything. He wanted to paste them all over his walls so he could look around and see the ones he missed so much. 

He hated coming to this park. But he just couldn’t help himself.