Man on the Bench

I got a call to visit a man's home to have him execute some legal documents as he was terminally ill and could not travel.  I am a neighborhood lawyer and this type of request comes in fairly ofter.  It was Saturday morning, it was hot , humid and oppressive as it gets.   It is always a little difficult to go into a home with a hospital bed sitting in the living room, with a terminally ill loved one viewing you with trepidation , for you are there to validate the fact that they are dying.  There is business to be done in preparation for that certain death.  I sense the discomfort for I have the same discomfort.  I do what I have to do, with courtesy and dignity and with patience.  But I always leave the home feeling a bit low.   the eyes of the person in the bed pleading for me to not notice the obviously shocking appearance, the eyes of the family pleading for me to get signatures, to answer questions and to avoid any mention of death surely impending. I find these situations just a bit draining,  I know other lawyers who find them so stressing that they stopped doing them, refuse to do them.

After conducting business, I went to leave and I drove down the street and passed a park.

The park was a pleasant looking place in a pleasant neighborhood. The grass was beautiful in that it was green beyond what it should be in drought plagued early August. The ballfields were manicured , smooth, the lines fresh.  I thought back to my youth and how our fields were dusty and hot and the grass was more of a weedy sparse  prarie.  This was plush and  there were no bare spots to be seen.

Being that it was pretty early , there was nothing going on in the park except for a mom and dad with their children at the play area.  But then I spotted him, the man on the bench.  

He was a solitary figure, sitting on a park bench, above and away from the ball fields.  I pulled my car over down the street and watched him from a distance.  He was not reading a book or newspaper or anything for that matter.  He had not earpeices , so no music was involved.  He was just sitting.

I wondered , was he trying to recapture games of his youth from his perch on the bench. Was he thinking about his son or daughter who might have played there and is now moved on.  Was he , was he, was he.  All manner of possibles, was he out of work and contemplating his plight, was he off an argument with his wife and  needed to think.  Was he sick, was he well.  Was he contemplating the meaning of life.

Or just maybe, was he just sitting on the bench thinking.   I went and found myself a bench and for one half hour I allowed myself to just think.   I think life is good and should be celebrated.