We usually open the place. . .or at least the first two there.
We don’t have to wait to be seated, we just go and sit in our regular places. He’s a table ahead of me, usually with his back to me and he works on the Daily Crossword from the papered news.
It’s always, “Hello, Chuck.”
“Hello, John”
Not THAT day.
I didn’t look up right away, but I felt his presence. When I looked up our eyes met. His were a watery, blurry blue.
“My mom is dying. You work for hospice, right?”
He didn’t give me a chance to answer before he started telling me how she had just been given a diagnosis of brain cancer and the news itself has seemed to crush her. He said that she just has seemed to give up since hearing the news and since, dad died.
He talked about how much guilt he felt because it’s been his sister, not him that’s taken care of his mother and his father while they were sick and just giving money was a poor substitute.
He talked
I listened
After a short pause, he told me what an easy person I was to talk to and what great advice I had given him…mind you, I only profoundly told him:
“Uh-huh.”
“Really?”
“And why do you think that way?”
We both took a sip of our coffee and he looked down at my plate that I hadn’t touch since he began talking.
“Ahhh. . .sometimes the eggs aren’t always sunny side up, huh?”
There it was. . . .
“No. . .No, sometimes they’re scrambled,” I said back.
“And that’s ok, isnt’ it,” he asked?
“And that’s ok,” I offered back.
He apologized for bothering me.
I thanked him for trusting me enough to tell me about his mother.
Our breakfasts were different that morning.
Actually they never tasted the same. . .
They were better!
You don’t have to have the same DNA, blood type or similar heart beats or even the same taste of eggs to be heard or better still. . .
L I S T E N
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