As Keith Rogers sat there on the sidewalk, propped-up against the old hedge-maple, which like himself, had seen far better days, he routinely devoured the remnants of his ‘Bacon McDouble combo with a large Fanta’ that he had been able to afford, only on account of a young woman’s generosity but half an hour earlier, when she slipped him a twenty dollar bill as he lay partly under a hedge beneath the golden arches of the McDonalds on 14th street. He had been dozing in the late morning sun but was aroused by her approaching footsteps disturbing the carpet of recently fallen snow, on this particular Wednesday as it was, on February 14th 2018. She could have been no more than eighteen or nineteen, but in those seconds that she handed him the bill and he took it gratefully – a connection was made. She seemed familiar somehow, but in what way and on what occasion in the past, he really couldn’t say. It was the words she whispered however, that now repeated themselves in his head.

“Sorry the bill has that tear in it, but it’s all I have to give you.”

Still scarcely believing his good fortune, he looked up from the bill to thank her, but she had gone. He stood up slowly and glanced both ways along 14th street but was no longer able to see her in the busy morning crowd. He sat back down alongside his rusted old bicycle and felt his age – seventy-six last birthday. How long had his life been so desolate? Fifteen, twenty years now, he couldn’t be sure. How had this happened? He had once had a great job in an advertising company, with prospects of further advancement – perhaps as far as Vice President. Having put his career ahead of everything else, he had married fairly late in life. He had been thirty-seven when he met Ellen, herself thirty five – not that she looked it. In her, he had found something of greater worth than corporate climbing and she orbited his world. To say that he had loved her would be to state the obvious. Their marriage was a two-way street and all they ever needed was to be with each other. Such a rare and wonderful union was never to last however. Two years after their marriage they had a son. The image of his father and blessed with his mother’s love of literature, he scored a high percentile in all his school subjects. By the time he hit 7th grade in Middle School, his academic future was assured, he topped his grade in most every subject and was undoubtedly the “boy most likely!” Thus, the knock at their front door in the Fall of 1992, which admitted a crestfallen Police Officer with the unenviable task of informing two parents that their son had been the victim of a hit and run drunk driver as he was cycling home, didn’t exactly make their day. The fact that they had apprehended the driver was of little consolation. So devastated were they, neither was in any condition to lend much support to the other. Keith returned to work as he had to obviously. Ellen was totally unable to function for several weeks and even after the inevitable weeks of “counselling,” still had no answer to her unresolved question – WHY?

Quite often, tragedies like this, cause an irretrievable breakdown in the marriage. If possible, this one brought Keith and Ellen even closer together than before. Neither of them wanted another child, as it might always feel at some stage like a “replacement,” and besides, Ellen was biologically ‘at risk’ at her age now. They still had at least, each other! That is, until Ellen’s check-up a few weeks later, when her blood work analysis came back showing she had late stage ductal carcinoma (breast cancer) – far too advanced for surgery. Ellen took the news better than Keith who was inconsolable on both his own and his wife’s behalf. The battle was fought with chemotherapy and radiation treatments, which realistically achieved no more than to prolong the inevitable. The cancer spread to vital organs. Ellen’s weight loss and hair loss were but side issues. He felt her pain, despite her brave attempts at normality, even as her frame shrunk and her body capitulated to the disease. Mercifully, she died whilst heavily sedated, coming to the very end of the line on a journey she had never bought a ticket for.