Old Man

He greeted me with a joke.

The fact that it wasn't funny didn't really matter. It was inconsequential, really. What was important was that he started off on the right foot, trying to make a good impression to someone he didn't know and had no reason to sway.

It was the fact that he cared.

He was old but alive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, despite a body that slowly, but surely, held him back. When he and his wife sat at my desk, he introduced her as the love of his life. Fifty years total, if they included the courtship. Even longer than that if their first-grade acquaintance could be counted.

They looked into each other's eyes and smiled.

I asked how he had been doing. His answer was surprising. It wasn't the usual bullshit. Usually it's "fine" or "I could complain, but who would listen?" with a weak laugh. Instead, he was upfront and honest. "I've been better." He spoke of kidney failure and neuropathy, the slow shutdown that lead to intense pain. Every moment was agony, he admitted, and a replacement wasn't in sight. He was approaching seventy, and wasn't exactly a priority when it came to the ever-finite pool of organ donation. Life was for the young, and he had left youth behind a long time ago.

He was afraid of what would follow.

He asked me about what I was doing with myself. I told him of completed a teaching degree, a failed teaching career, and a newborn novel. I told him of hopes and dreams, and my impatience for the future. I told him all of these things, and he listened.

He said I was a talented man.

It was touching. It's always so easy to hear compliments without registering them. Either people mean them, or you don't care that they do. The older you get, the rarer actual praise is from someone you admire, whether there's less praise overall or simply less people worth admiration. But the old man meant them, and that meant the world to me.

Then he asked me if I knew Jesus.

I lied. In the South, you have to lie about that particular question. To be an apostate, an atheist, is tantamount to inhumanity. You're worse than white trash, worse than a Muslim, the scary Other that people whisper about, but rarely face. So I lied, and he smiled. He spoke of Timothy and Paul. How Paul had put Timothy in charge of his ministry. It was a big regret for the old man.

He hadn't had the pleasure of meeting his Timothy.

But perhaps that's why he had met me. A hope, a prayer, a seed for the future. The old man, an electrical engineer my profession and a preacher by trade, wanted a successor. Perhaps I could look into ministry, possibly give him my thoughts on a few Bible studies. I smiled. I agreed. I would look.

But I knew I couldn't give him anymore than that.

The old man came in aching, dying, looking for a successor to his legacy, some continuation of the work he had put into the world. He feared death and so he sought life, not eternal, but temporal, not spiritual, but actual. He sought those things in me, the very foundation of which was faith.

Something I didn't have.

Something I'll never have.

But maybe, just maybe the old man will love on. Not his Jesus, nor his Timothy, but his memory. A kind old man who wanted more, and may have gotten just that in a writer, no matter how fledgling he may be. I'll remember his kindness and goodness, those twin sparks that he aimed at me, despite having no reason to.

I'll carry you always, old man.

I hope that's good enough.