Another Day
by Martin Green

 

 

Another day, thought Paul Lerner.  Another day in the life of an old guy in a retirement community who’d lost his wife.  In the first six months after Sally’s passing he’d been kept busy by all the things that had to be done after such an event.  Now, with nothing much left to do, every day was pretty much like another.  It was easy to forget what day it was. 

Paul looked at the bedside clock.  A little after nine.  No rush to get out of bed.  The earlier he got up the longer the day would be.  He reached over for his iPad.  The iPad said it was Thursday.  He checked the stock market.  Lower.  He checked the latest news.  All bad.  He looked at his e-mails.  The usual spam had accumulated overnight.  Among all the spam, an e-mail from the editor of an online magazine he contributed to and an e-mail from another writer he’d begun exchanging e-mails with.  He’d delete the spam later.  He’d reply to the two e-mails  that night.  He put down the iPad and lay there for a while, thinking how different things would be if Sally was still there.  Finally, he shrugged.  He might as well get up and face it.  Another day.

In the kitchen, the usual morning routine.  First, the pill-taking regimen.  Blood pressure, acid reflux, immune system, a pill for something he didn’t remember.  After this, the usual breakfast, cold cereal with fruit, the fruit supposed to be good for old guys like him.  Then to his armchair and coffee while he did the daily crossword puzzle, supposed to be good for his aging brain.  

After this, another period of just sitting and doing nothing.  Then out of the chair, putting away the breakfast things, trying to neaten things up, a losing cause.  Sally used to do all that.  Then back to the bedroom.  Getting dressed.  Once something done without thinking.  Now getting his pants on an acrobatic excercise and finding his shirt buttons an adventure.  After this, the daily trip to the mailbox.  He hadn’t noticed until recently that his driveway was that inclined.  Now he had to be careful going down and it was a climb going back up.  The mail was as usual. What he thought of as Send Money letters.  Amazing how many charities there were in the world.

By this time he was ready for lunch.  The usual sandwich.  After, reading the newspaper, doing some writing, watching an hour’s worth of the news, same as in the morning, bad.  By this time, tired and ready for his afternoon liedown and usually a nap.  The phone rang.  The usual robocall.  No, he’d forgotten it was Thursday.  The day his oldest son Mark usually called him.  As usual. Mark asked him how he was doing and as usual Paul replied that he was doing okay.  They talked about various things for about half an hour.  Mark’s good news was that he’d has his performance review and was given a ten percent raise.  His not so good news was that his wife Nancy, who’d recently retired from her office job, didn’t seem to have anything to do and just lounged around the house all day.  Paul remembered that after he retired he’d taken some classes at their community college.  He’d wanted a creative writing course but that was filled so he took a course in Shakespeare and that had been kind of fun.  The next term, as a returning student, he’d gotten into the creative writing class.  He suggested trying something at the community college for Nancy.  Mark said he’d mention it to her.   After the phone call Paul retired to his bed and thought about those community college courses and then gradually drifted off to sleep.  When he awakened and was ready to get up it about time for supper.  Back into the kitchen and looking into the freezer for the usual tv dinner.        

After, the clean-up.  Then some television watching, not on the TV set but on his iPad.  An old show he remembered liking about ten years ago and which he’d begun watching, not remembering much if anything about it.  It passed the time.  Then to the computer.  He saved his e-mails for the night when after that TV watching there was nothing else to do.

After this, he sat at his desk for a while.  His son had asked how he was doing and he’d told him okay.  How did  he really feel?  Not okay.  Then he typed on his computer: how weary, stale, tired, flat and unprofitable this world seems to me.  It was a phrase from one of Hamlet’s soliloquies he’d been trying to remember since he thought of that Shakespeare class.  How did he feel?  As usual, Shakespeare had put it best.  He wasn’t sure he had it exactly.  He’d look it up.  Not now.  Tomorrow.  Another day.

 

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