Finally, he nodded.
“Near the bottom.”
He walked into the garden, knelt in the damp soil, and began picking beans.
For the first time in decades, he wasn’t running from the past.
He was doing something useful with it.
The following Friday, I accompanied Dad on his deliveries.
We left before sunrise with eleven boxes of fresh vegetables.
We visited an elderly widower who could barely walk, a struggling mother whose husband was hospitalized, several older residents in an apartment building, and a disabled veteran named Curtis.
Everywhere we went, people knew my father.
They remembered my mother too.
Curtis told me how she used to bring him homemade peach pie every August.
“I still miss her,” he said.
I smiled through my tears.
“So do I.”
After finishing the deliveries and dropping off the remaining produce at St. Luke’s, Dad took an unexpected turn.
He drove to the cemetery.
