AUTHOR’S NOTE
This was written spur of the moment in response to a post on one of the group sites that I belong to on Father’s Day of this year. I have had very good responses from those few that I have chosen to share it with, and it was suggested by a few of them that I might want to share it with others. But I am a somewhat unschooled writer. I write by inspiration alone, inspired by events and people around me, or, as was the case with this story, by something that I have read or heard or even by a random thread of memory. I do not go seeking the words by choice, they simply come of their own accord.
It was Father’s Day, once again, at The Happy Hills Nursing Home. Visitors had been coming and going, in a steady stream, ever since visiting hours had begun.
The room was filled with the happy chatter of adults, and the excited voices of children, who were vying with each other, in attempts to tell their grandparents all that they had been learning, and doing, since their last visit.
There was a general atmosphere of gaiety and celebration amongst those gathered in the community room that day…
With only one exception…an elderly man, who sat back out of the main group of those gathered there, simply sitting and watching what was going on around him. He kept looking towards the entryway door, with gradually growing frequency, as if watching for someone.
As the time grew closer and closer to visiting time being over, the elderly man, whose name was Benjamin, got a look of deeper and deeper sadness, and despair, upon his face, as he watched the gay and happy interactions of those around him.
As the time grew closer and closer for the visiting time to be over, Benjamin became more and more focused on the entryway, his face growing sadder with each passing moment.
Sharon, a nurse who had been with the home when Benjamin first joined them, watched him, her heart breaking a little with each passing moment, as she watched that sadness etch itself, deeper and deeper, into Benjamin’s face.
Sharon knew why Benjamin was watching that entryway so closely. She knew that Benjamin, whose wife had passed away, several years prior to his joining the home, had no living relatives, save his son, his two grandchildren, and his daughter in law.
Benjamin’s son, who had come with him the day that Benjamin joined the home, which had been during the fall, had promised that he would bring his family to come and spend Father’s Day with Benjamin.
But when Father’s day came, the son did not. And thus it was for three years. So Benjamin sat there for the fourth Father’s Day since joining the home, waiting, watching, hoping and praying for his son to walk through that door.
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