Facing the changes in life as we age can be difficult. When we are young, we manage to adjust.

As we get older, however, it becomes harder to move on with life, especially if the change is due to the loss of a very special loved one. But to continue to thrive, we have to, as is the case in . . .

A Sketch Of Life

     Jeb, Marty, and I sat on the plush leather couches in my living room. Pictures of Nancy, the kids, James and Casi, and me, dressed in our holiday best, hung somewhat askew on the wall to the left of the large stone fireplace. Nancy died three years ago and I haven’t been the same since. Married for fifty-two years, we had good times and bad, but she’d been the center of my life.

     I looked over at Jeb, his chin bent, almost touching his chest. His gray, unkempt hair fell toward his face, decorated with a two-day growth of beard. He wore a decade old plaid shirt and dark blue jeans and had tears in his eyes. At age seventy-five, his fifty-four year marriage all but ended as the gods of memory took his wife, Mary, from him six years ago.  Sitting next to Jeb, seventy-four year old Marty smiled, not a big broad smile, but a small sad one. His eyes stared off in the distance, looking for the days that had disappeared into the depths of a tired brain. Marty had been alone for ten years, his wife Karen, killed in a car accident at age sixty-four. And Marty still hadn’t recovered.

     Three men sitting together, but very much alone, shared an overcast, mid-October, Saturday afternoon in Sacramento. The three of us had accomplished much in life—Jeb, a pharmacist and community leader; Marty, a businessman who’d owned twenty successful jewelry stores; and me, a former educator and author, who, in my prime, had three books on the New York Times best seller list—but today, we wondered how we’d survive the years to come.

     Marty looked at me and mumbled, “Did you say something?”

     “No, not really. Just thinking aloud. I do a lot of that these days.”

     “What are you thinking about, George?” Jeb muttered.

     “The future. Just pondering what it will be like and if I even want one. I don’t know if it’s worth going on. The house is too big for me. I don’t seem to have a purpose anymore. The kids live four hundred miles away in the L.A. area. They’re very busy. Working long hours and raising six grandkids between them, they have little time to visit. And I hate traveling.”

     “So what’re you going to do?” Marty inquired.

     “I don’t know. I just don’t know,” I whimpered.

     “You know we’re all in the same boat,” Jeb chanted.

     “And it’s sinking,” Marty moaned.

     “If it didn’t already sink?” I said, somewhat confused. “Have you guys thought about the future?”

     “Not me, it’s been ten years and I haven’t left the past behind,” Marty murmured.

     “Me either,” Jeb groaned. “My wife’s not gone, but she is gone. When I visit her at the Village Memory Care Home, she has no idea who I am. None at all. It drives me crazy.”

     “So, what are we going to do?” I asked.

     Both Jeb and Marty shook their heads and mumbled in unison, “Don’t know. Just don’t know.”

     “Well, this has got to stop. We’re intelligent men with successful pasts. When we leave this world, we should do it in style.”

     “In style?” Jeb chanted. “I haven’t been in today’s world in ten years. It all went down hill when Mary’s memory started to fade. I didn’t care who I was or what I looked like.”

     “All right, I’ve got an idea. Are you with me?”

     “I’m not even with myself.” Marty droned in a dull monotone. “But if both of you are willing, I guess I am, too.”

     “I’ll try,” Jeb said in a voice just above a whisper.” 

     “Okay, I want you both to go home. Come on, get going.”

     “Go home? And do what?” Marty questioned.

     “Think about what you want to be when you grow up,” I shouted with enthusiasm.

     “Grow up? What the hell does that mean. I grew up a long time ago and now I’ve grown down. I’ll be dead in a year or two. So why bother?” Jeb sputtered.

     “Calm down fellows. Let me rephrase. Go home, sit in your favorite chair, lean back, and dream of the most elegant clothing you can imagine being buried in?”

     “Buried? For heavens sake, I’m going to be cremated,” Marty shouted. “Signed the papers years ago. I don’t need clothing to do that.”

     “Humor me guys and just do it. I don’t want to see you for a week.”

     “But what about our Thursday night card game?”

     “I’ll cancel it. Be here at six on Saturday dressed in the style of your choosing. Dinner is on me.”

     I shooed them out the door, sat down on the couch, put my feet up on the leather ottoman and began to resketch my life. My mind flittered back fifteen years to the night I was honored for my literary prowess at a major dinner for dignitaries in the world of literature. Nancy looked beautiful in her elegant silver and white Armani gown. And I was a dreamboat. All the women stared at me. Their eyes sent messages of seduction. In my blazing black tux, complete with red and white plaid cummerbund and matching tie, I was every woman’s desire. And now I knew I had to recreate that moment . . . without Nancy, of course.

     During the week, I dug through the cedar chest in the attic. I seemed to recall I’d put the tux up there. I had worn it on a special night and figured I needed to keep it. Dragging it from the chest, I laid it over the arm of an old oak rocking chair and disrobed.

     Ten minutes later, I stood in front of an ancient, standing floor mirror and perused the man I used to be . . . a bit plumper and with somewhat less hair, but still very handsome, if I do say so myself. The tux seemed a bit tight, but it would do. Just had to suck in my gut.

     I grabbed the clothes I shed off the rocker and went downstairs, still feeling on top of my new world. Saturday couldn’t come too soon for me.

     What the guys didn’t know was that I had arranged for all three of us to attend a singles dinner dance at the Elks Club. Now, technically Jeb wasn’t single, but we’d just need to keep that little piece of information our secret for now.

     My heart raced all day Saturday. I hadn’t felt this good in years. I got up early and did some chores around the house. Completing my tasks, I showered and dressed. Then I just stood in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom and fantasized about how the women would pine over me. “Wow! This will be a great evening,” I sighed.

     The bell rang about ten minutes before six. I ran to the door and tugged it open. There, stood Marty looking like a gent out of GQ Magazine. With his white hair slicked back, he had dressed in a blue pinstriped suit and bright red tie. “How do I look,” he asked, in a meek manner.

     “Great! Just great,” I shouted, as I ushered him into the living room. At that moment, the bell rang again.

     As I opened door, I bowed and made a circling motion with my hand and arm in respect for the elegant man in my doorway. Jeb, clean-shaven for the first time this week, with combed gray hair, returned the bow. My eyes ran up and down his tall, slender frame. Dressed in splendor in the gray business suit he wore as a city council member, he spurted, “So what do you think?”

     At a loss for words, I gulped, “Fabulous.”

     I gathered Marty off the couch and the three of us scrambled into my eight-year old Toyota Camry and started driving the short two miles to the Elks Club.

     “Where are we going?” Marty asked.

     “Just trust me. We’ll be there in five minutes and you’ll find out.” Neither man said another word, as we pulled into the parking lot at the Elks Club.

     When we entered the building at about 6:15, nobody greeted us. Hearing the door, a custodian emerged from the storage room to the left of the entrance. “What’re you guys doing here?”

     “We’re here for the dance.”

     “Dance?” he said, totally bewildered.

     “Yeah, the City Annual Ball.”

     “Oh, that’s not until next week. Nothing much happening here tonight—just some Elks in the back holding a business meeting. Think you need to go now.”

     With tails tucked between our legs, we shuffled out the door into the parking lot. Then I heard a chuckling sound coming from Marty’s direction and then an outright burst of laughter coming from Jeb.

     We looked at one another and I shouted, “Aren’t we the greatest looking gents around.” The others shook their heads in agreement.

     A new sketch had been drawn and life looked a lot better than it did a week ago.

Copyright © 2015 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.