He stirred. The old man struggled up from a deep sleep, or at least he struggled up because he didn’t sleep very well these days – fitfully at best. Not as well as when he was younger. When he was full of life and life was full of him. When his days were filled with family and work and play, and the nights were needed to renew himself for the next day of opportunities and joys which abounded in his life – at the time. Now though he was old. And alone. And life was a burden to be borne one day at a time. A waiting. A waiting for something, anything to happen. If nothing else then for his own end as he had nothing to look forward to any more.
His children, now all grown up of course, had left the little village many years ago. There was nothing for the young here, not even for the not so young. They had moved far away, to the big cities inland, to find lives of their own, and it seemed those lives no longer had room for him. But, he didn’t blame them. They had their own families, their own worries, their own struggles to deal with, and the distance, well the distance was great and the journey to visit difficult and time consuming. He sighed. No he couldn’t blame them for not coming around to visit their old, gray father...
Working on it...