Rain Day
It rained yesterday and I forgot it was my anniversary. No penalty to pay for either event. The gauge this morning shows a little bit more than .3 inches fell, and my wife passed away in 2020. That anniversary comes in August. We needed the rain, that’s for sure. I hope more rain fell somewhere else, maybe further up the watershed. That would be good.
As to the anniversary, we had 50 of them. I’m not sure how many of them she remembered after a certain point in her dementia, not that it matters. I was there. I remembered. Now I’m here. Back where I started, more or less. Alone, but not really. There are the memories, the kids, grandkids, friends, their kids, cousins, neighbors and so on. It’s a long list.
If I were a younger man, I might be thinking of new beginnings about now. But I’m older. I’m simply trying to age gracefully and go out with dignity. Two things that seem within my grasp. I have to be careful, however, because I’ve had things within my grasp before that I failed to grasp for one reason or the other and I’d hate to miss this one. That would be awkward. I really do like being a graceful, older man with dignity.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale