A sad story

This is a very depressing story. No, I didn't cry while writing it :), but it's still agonizingly sad...Still, I've decided to post it as it is the first sad story I have written.


The old man sits, slumped, on the chair by the window, a forgotten newspaper by his side. He used to enjoy reading, but lately the words swim before his tired old eyes, like blurry swarms of black insects or fishes. The eyes behind his thick glasses are bleary, with the deteriorating vision that comes with age.

His ears, however, are as sharp as ever. Hearing gay laughter, he gazes out the window
and sees shapes of young men and women in colourful dress, fluttering butterflies darting in and out of the sunshine. The neighbours are having a party.

Snatches of song reach the old man in the lonely little white house, and he remembers the garden parties of summers past. He remembers smooth green lawns, cheerful neighbours, and light summer salads and punch laid out on wooden tables. He remembers couples twirling along the grass, and remembers whirling around himself with a merry girl, Bess, his future wife. He smiles, remembering.

Then the vision is gone, and he is an old man once more, feeble and weak, no more the beaming bright boy of the past. His hands lie limp in his lap, hands weak but once strong, rough with work and mottled with age. He looks around his house, squinting through the glasses.

His house is a small one, filled with the relics of a long, long life. Each one triggers a memory, and he is happy for a moment, but when the dream fades, he wishes it hadn’t. His Bess’ gentle touches are all around, in the seashell mobile on the ceiling, in the carved wooden birds on the mantle, in the brightly painted bowls on the table, in the embroidered pillows in the bedroom.

The bedroom, with its double bed, occupied by only one now.

A tear slides down the wrinkled old cheek. The old man turns to the window once more, and hears a neighbour’s son shout, “Come on, Dad, and throw me another one!” Again the old man is transported back to the past, when his own son played catch with him in the backyard. “Come on, Dad, toss it over!” his son would yell, much like the boy across the street.

His son was a fine boy, brilliant and sensible, with a smile like sunshine. Now, he is a successful banker, more occupied with making money than anything else.

The old man has not seen him for a year.

True, he did come to Bess’ funeral, and did clasp the old man’s hands in his, and the young banker’s eyes had been full of tears. And true, he had given the old man over ten thousand dollars in cheques, and had said, “Go on, Dad, spend it however you want.” But then, he had turned and gone, and since then, almost a year, he had never visited.

The cheques are still in the safe of the old man’s house. The old man takes comfort in knowing that his son wants him to live well, but he wants something more than money, something too precious and sacred to put into words.

The old man bows his head, a sorrowful, hunched figure by the window. First, he had been a ruddy, merry boy, loved by all who saw him. Later on, he blossomed into a laughing young man, with a passionate zeal for life. He married, became a caring husband and a loving father. He was a diligent worker, a loyal friend and an upright man and citizen.

But now, he is only a lonely old man, with no one to love him.

All he has left are memories.