It had been a few months since our last Sunday morning chat on the church sidewalk.

Tall with a big build, Gil was one of my more awkward acquaintances but faithful to a fault in his routine.

After service I always left to spend the day with my young grandsons and he was always off to the nursing home to visit his ailing wife of half a century.

When he failed to show up for a few weeks, I asked if anyone had seen him. I didn’t have his number and had never bothered to get his last name.

He showed up this past Wednesday night, walking to the grocery store for some orange juice resembling nothing of the man he once had been.

I went out to greet him. He’d shriveled down to a frail frame that seemed to wear skin and bones like an oversized tshirt three times larger than necessary.

Gil has bladder cancer.

His wife had passed in March at the facility, his car had been in the shop for months, too expensive to repair, and the cancer diagnosis was only slightly more recent, obviously hungrily having eaten away at the once impressive presence of a man.

I invited him in for a meal with our recovery group on his return trip from the store and he accepted. He’d not had as much a human conversation with anyone since his wife’s death and seemingly beamed at the invite.

I got his number and his last name this time and along with hopes he’d indeed return for dinner and a chat was a wish he wasn’t destined to die alone soon in his tiny apartment like so many other widowers I’ve known.

I’m not sure what became of him after his orange juice trip but I will be calling him today to assure him he’s not alone in this world anymore.

All the lonely people.
Where do they all belong
if not in the company of friends.