“The world is made up of two classes – the hunters and the huntees.”
― Richard Connell, The Most Dangerous Game
I’d always wanted to see London at Christmas. When the boys were small George and I didn’t feel as though we could leave them at Christmas. We believed, as many young people do, there would be plenty of opportunities to have adventures when our sons were grown and had their own families. Then the boys finished college and got married and there was debt and soon grandchildren. And we couldn’t bear to miss those holidays with the little ones. Soon after Matt moved to Boston with his family George started to get sick.
At first he was just more tired than usual. He had retired from his state job and took a part time job at a local construction business as an accountant. I had cut back my teaching hours years earlier working only as a substitute teacher. We took a couple of short trips; once we went to visit Matt and the family in Boston. Another time we went to visit Jesse in New Mexico where he was on a dig. But George was always so tired. Always a stubborn man, he resisted going to the doctor. By the time he gave in to my constant pressure and the combined pressure of our sons and his good friend, our neighbor Bill, his heart was in bad shape. A week before his scheduled by-pass surgery he had a massive coronary. That was almost two years ago. I was fifty-eight years old.
Matt tried to convince me to leave North Carolina and move to Boston. I said I would think about it although I knew I wouldn’t leave my home; the home where I had raised my sons, shared a wonderful life with a man I loved, a place I decorated, gardened, and loved for over thirty years.
I had great friends who were there for me, sometimes trying to set me up with older gentlemen. I had a great neighbor who wouldn’t let me mow my yard or even change the porch light bulb. Bill had been there with George right through to the end. In the almost fifteen years he’d been our neighbor he and George had bonded closer than brothers. They’d gone to ball games, gone fishing, and seen more movies together than I had seen in a lifetime. They read books and discussed them ad infinitum. Bill didn’t drive which was unusual for a man in our town. But Bill had moved down South after an early retirement…
View From the Sixth Floor on Amazon US
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