Eventide is when the air cools, the highway traffic thins and days end approaches. Nostalgia sat on Eddie’s shoulders like his worn denim jacket. May had cut one up years ago for patches and rags. Always the frugal one she had saved their behinds more than once. He missed her in a way he did not know could happen. They had talked many times about retirement and their own mortality but it was ever only an idea. When retirement came around, he still had the ranch and she had her life set up outside of the ranch. Oh, she tried to get him involved in some of it, but he was happy tending his cows. They hadn’t any children and he did hire a couple to help him. Early on they were not really necessary. He was just lonely. With each passing year, he found he was unable to keep up with the hard work of the ranch. Andy picked up the slack and his wife, MaryLou, kept his house, cleaned out his refrigerator and they became his family. Their children were like grandchildren and even called him Poppy. When May was alive she would have been a wonderful grandmother baking them cookies, teaching them how to sew, playing hide and seek with them. Thinking of it all made him smile. One tear tipped onto his grizzled cheek and he chuckled.
Eddie could feel his own mortality in his bones every time he had to straighten his bended knees. “Come on, old man. Get yourself moving. You’ve got a new foal coming and the mare needs help. Here comes Joey - my young assistant. Wants to be a vet one day. Guess I’d better keep on giving him that practical experience he always talks about.” Eddie slipped on his patched denim jacket and, hat on his head, he edged slowly down the porch steps. “Hold up there, young Joey. You knock me over and you’ll have to birth that foal yourself!”
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
~ Andy Warhol
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