I remember the last time I saw my
grandfather. It was January and
the sun was out. We were sitting
on the front porch of his white, almost vacant and cold home. It was just how he lived. I hadn’t seen him since my
grandmother’s funeral. I don’t
think it bothered him very much that she was dead and I don’t think it bothered
him much that he was still alive.
His eyes were frosty like that color of blue that is reflected through
one of the icicles on the old barn with no doors, when sky is clear, and you
are standing in the sewn patch of yellow sun-stitched hay. The wind was blowing; lightly it gave a
crisp bite on the cheeks and ears.
Snow had fallen the previous night and the fragile powdery flakes were picked
up in the gusty rhythms. He had a blank,
chilled but content look about him.
He did not speak as he smoked his pipe and, I, with my little
experience, as he would say sometimes, smoked cigarettes. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say but I
felt compelled to speak. “Are you
thinking about the war?”
“No.”
“Oh, there is just a strange look
in your stare.”
“I only think of nothing, and the
sounds of the frosty wind.”
And we sat and listened to the
green scaly snow peppered pines and junipers thinking of no misery.
