Proof The Bible Is True

02/06/19

 

I was making my morning coffee in the kitchen and wondering how I would get through the day, especially with the rain coming down, when Tony’s picture toppled from the mantle in the family room. Again. Ever since my husband died two years earlier, that gold-framed photo—Tony posing with his prize hunting dogs—kept falling. That wasn’t all that was happening. Sometimes the TV would turn on out of the blue. And I’d get this feeling that Tony was still with me. Was it just the wishful thinking of a lonely widow? I couldn’t be sure.

 

I picked up the frame, dusted it off and put it back in place. I stared out the window that flanked the fireplace, thinking of Tony. If only he really were still here. I needed him now more than ever. It had been the most difficult two years of my life. Not only had Tony died of liver failure. My mom died around the same time too. Then came more bad news. The night before, my brother called. He’d been planning on moving into my spare room. Not anymore.

 

“I have cancer, Patricia,” he told me on the phone. “It’s terminal.”

 

This wasn’t how I’d pictured my golden years. Tony and I had had big plans. I was a photographer and drug addiction counselor. Tony was a Vietnam vet who’d risen through the ranks to become a master chief petty officer in the Navy. We’d moved around a lot, every three years to a new naval base. It didn’t matter where we lived as long as we were together. After Tony retired, we decided to settle in one place for good. Tony was a country boy who loved nothing more than biscuits with gravy and Hank Williams. We moved into a farmhouse on 55 acres in north Georgia. I imagined a lifetime of sipping sweet tea on the back porch, while Tony spun yarns about coon hunting. His dream was to raise champion hunting dogs. Meanwhile, I had my heart set on getting a sweet little Yorkie.

 

“Can’t I talk you into a beagle or Lab?” Tony said, poking fun at my choice of a dog, one that could fit in my handbag. Yorkies weren’t exactly farm dogs. But I’d wanted one since I was a kid.

 

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