The old man had that look about him, the look of a life well lived, one where love took a front row seat in the challenging times and the good times.
Age and wisdom are quite separate things and each can arrive ahead of the other. This was never truer than with this combination of old man and boy.
He was an old man, but I could see the young boy in him still yearning to return to his train set. It was as if his soul sat down at one of those little platforms with the tiny trees, waiting at the miniature station for the steady sound of turning wheels and puffs of steam. Or maybe that inner boy waited for a time to put down the mask of sanguine resilience and be himself all over again, playful and silly. I could see the worry lines and how they made crosses with those of joy, the boy his parents welcomed and the man the world asked for, the one who'd love to rise and the one who'd love to rest.
The doctor wore that face he always did when the news wasn't good. "Burt, you're developing Alzheimer's like your father did."
Burt's wrinkled face crumpled as he rubbed it with his spotted hand. "Pops got so violent. He wasn't himself anymore. Doc, I can't be like that..." His voice broke away as his chest heaved.
The doctor shook his head with the tiniest of smiles. "A cup can only spill over if there's something in it. There's no anger in you. You're just not going to remember things so well, and it's slow, you've got a while."
A wizened face peered out from under a wedge of blue hat, which was the only thing on his otherwise bald and mottled scalp save a sparse fringe of white. His eyes were so heavily lidded and weighed down with wrinkled folds that it was almost like talking to someone asleep, yet he was quite alert. Not seeing Lacy beneath the level of the counter he said “One youth admission?” Sophie had been expecting the croak of old age but his voice was more like a sergeant major, strong and distinctly upper class.
The map of wrinkles on his face told of the most incredible journey. His eye lines told of laughter, of warm smiles and affection. His forehead told of worries past and worries present. But mostly they were so deeply engrained they told or a man who had travelled through eight decades to that moment; to stand here as an old man, beaten and forlorn. To be dismissed as "old" when he was so much more than the sum of his parts.
Age only brings wisdom if the heart remained vulnerable and pure in the most challenging of times. In this the old man had paid his fare in tears of every kind - he was one who had earned these listening ears.