The mid morning sun came down on the field, melting the last of the patches of snow, and reflected brightly to the houses on the hill above. From their balconies, the field shown like glass, and to the late risers drinking their morning coffee, it was. The early risers, the small children home from school on their last snow-day of the year, played and ran through the park and around the jungle gym, and looked like ants running across the glass to the late risers drinking their coffee on the balconies above. Eager dogs, thrilled to be outside again after the cold months of winter, excitedly towed coat-coddled owners behind them, bundled in puffy furs, wool hats, and earmuffs. The streets no longer had ice on them, but were wet and sprinkled with salt from the trucks. The brown-spotted swallows were returning from their winter migration to their home in the park, where children and elderly couples fed them old bread and corn, and made them too fat and lazy to hunt for worms.
In the coming days increasing numbers of visitors came to park, and in decreasing layers of clothes. Sometimes they brought a date or a book to read on a bench, or they brought their coffees and teas in steel thermoses that belched steam into the crisp, early-Spring air when they unscrewed the top. On particularly warm days fathers and sons flew kites, and one dedicated fan even resumed the tradition of a game-day BBQ in the park, though he wore his jersey over a down jacket under the sauce-stained apron. Long-passed were the days of ice-skating on the frozen pond in the middle of the park. Now remote-controlled boats occupied the water and scattered feeding mallards and brought much debaucherous enjoyment to their juvenile pilots. If you woke up especially early, you could see deer venture to the park to graze on the blackberry bushes that lined the soccer fields and held captive many soccer balls that rolled too far in for a kid to risk scratching his arms by the thorns to retrieve it. You could see the white-tailed does cautiously approach the fruit and then eat very fast for such a creature, stopping abruptly to investigate any noise that interrupted their meal before tentatively resuming. The park was coming alive again. It had been neglected since November and now it was March and it was lovely again. The days were warming, the park-goers were smiling, and the cold sadness of winter was gone—gone for everyone except Mr. Weinstein, whose wife had died that winter and took his joy with her. Now everyone in the park was joyful again, and no one missed her. But Mr. Weinstein was not joyful.
His days were a trance of routine in his house on the hill above the park. Everyday he woke up, made two eggs and four strips of bacon for breakfast, and read the paper at his table. But he didn't read it so much as hold it limply while glazed eyes raised and stared out the fog-edged window and faded back to days with Mrs. Weinstein. He remembered their first dates together, he remembered their big fights, and he remembered the diagnosis. He remembered trying to appear brave over a crippling helplessness that there was nothing he could do to save her from suffering. He remembered being filled with a vengeful hate after that. He remembered hurting himself and others with his drinking after she passed, and he remembered almost succeeding in drowning his miserable life in it. But now he had no hate left in him. Now he was only tired. Tired of the monotonous routine; tired of the two eggs and four strips of bacon everyday; tired of remembering happiness. He was tired of living. This wasn’t living. Living is what you did with someone. When you loved someone so much that whatever you did with them, made you love that thing, and it made you love the other person somehow more still. This wasn’t living; this was simply existing. And why should he exist? He lived before only for her, and now there was no her, and there was not much of him left either. He often wondered about what was after all this, if he would see her again, and if it would hurt when he went. But he wasn’t worried about the hurt, just curious about it. Nothing could hurt as much as he did when the doctor told him how long they had. Nothing could hurt as he had—as she had. The idea of what was next consumed him and ran obsessively through his head all day. He had no more enjoyment for, nor connection with, the current life, so he set his sights on the next one.
He resented the loom of it. It is this big inevitable thing that happens to everybody, but everyone is too afraid to talk about it. Then, when it comes along and shoves its face in your life by taking someone close to you, you don’t know what to do because you never talked about it. This lugubrious, grim thing comes for you, and you knew it would, but it has the luxury of choosing when and where it will happen. It is a deviant thing, coming when it wants, to surprise you and ruin everything. It just sits there, hiding behind your grey years, ready to jump out and take your life. Why should it get to choose? Why should I have to wait, scared, not knowing when I’ll go? Why should I exist just to suffer and mourn, while this ugly beast waits to end me? I’ll show it, I’ll take it myself! This is what he thought day after day, and it ate at his sanity. He paced around the house from room to room, chair to chair, obsequiously turning lights on and off again, mumbling bitter resentments to no one. Then he would come to a window and see all the joyful people in the park and become more bitter. Damn them! What is there to be joyful about? Don’t they remember her? Don’t they care? Then he would grumble off to another room and resume his existing.
One afternoon as he paced and approached the window, his eye caught a young man kneeling and proposing to his beautiful young girlfriend in the park. Her eyes lit up and her gloved hands rose to her face. Mr. Weinstein stared at them. It was where he had proposed to Mrs. Weinstein, long before they lived here in this house on the hill above the park, but when they would come regularly to walk, and dreamt of what it would be like to live in one of those houses on the hill above. One day we’ll live here, he promised her. It was the happiest he’d ever been, giving her that dream. Then they married and it was the happiest he’d ever been. Then every day after that was the happiest he’d ever been. Now it was the saddest he’d ever been; and these two young people would be happy. Why should they be happy? Don’t they know that big ugly beast will come and ruin everything? He was bitter with jealousy. They don’t know! They don’t know… he grumbled to himself. He felt his fists clench at his sides and his arthritic knuckles brushed the legs of his corduroy trousers. The young girl nodded her head in her gloved hands. It was a slow nod at first, reeling in disbelief, and then it became excitedly rapid, shaking tears loose from her eyes that ran down her smiling cheeks down to her chin. Then she released her hands from her mouth and spread them to embrace her new fiancé as he stood. The couple kissed and squeezed one another and beamed pure joy brighter than then the melting snow ever shone to the balconies on the houses on the hill above the park. It stirred Mr. Weinstein. He knew that joy and began to feel it again through them. He remembered kneeling down right where they were and nervously sputtering out the same question while her wide, shining eyes looked down at him. She was so young and bright and excited for life, and when she said yes, he thought he would burst right there. That’s how the young couple felt now. His whole body relaxed and his fists unclenched, and he felt a swelling feeling that had not been with him for a long time. He could see a young version of himself kneeling in the park, and he stared at the beautiful ghost of his wife smiling the biggest smile that would fit on her face. Now, the old Mr. Weinstein looked down at what once was the happiest he’d ever been, and tears came to his eyes. His throat swelled and shook his voice when he mumbled, Look at that… The three of them shared that moment, unbeknownst to the couple, for a long minute.
The pair walked off to enjoy their new engagement and their new, joyful lives, but Mr. Weinstein remained at the window, following them away from the park until they rounded the corner café and were out of sight. He stood there and wondered if they were going to the same Italian restaurant that he had after his proposal. He wondered if they would have the same fights he had during their marriage. Then he wondered if she would get sick too, and he became sad again, but he replayed the scene and it pushed the sadness out. There was still love out there in the park below. If it shouldn’t be his anymore, so be it. He had a wonderful fifty-two years of it with Mrs. Weinstein, and he was grateful for every second of it. Now these young lovers would carry it on and keep the world beautiful.
That night Mr. Weinstein went to sleep with a smile on his face. It was slight and the muscles struggled to remember the shape over his wrinkled lips, but it was there, showing an echo of the bursting joy he felt for fifty-two years of his lucky life. He dreamt of his proposal and of Mrs. Weinstein’s excited face and their teary kiss in the park below the balconies of the houses on the hill above. He dreamt sweetly and soundly, and in his deep slumber, the grim beast that comes for all, came for him and took him to see his lovely wife again; and he went with a smile.