ELDER MAN

He was and old man with big hands and a limp and he had lived in the same house all at his life. The house was falling apart and he hadn’t painted it for years, so it looked as if it would collapse at any moment. We walked past his house every day, and he was always worked in his garden and he always said hello.

One day, I came home alone-in fact, I had never walked home alone before, I looked up and saw the man at his window. He was watching me, and I felt as if he had been watching me for a long time. Then he came out of the house.

And we talked for several hours about his wife, who had died years ago. I could see that he was feeling alone, so I decided to stop to talk to him a few minutes every day. Sadly, I didn’t know that the next day, he would leave this world, that the day before had been the last day. He had finally gone to meet his wife and would never feel alone…again.