Seventy-Eight and Starting

Three months, starting in February, so he would be back in time to plant.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Elmer, 78, told his daughter on a Sunday that he had paid a deposit on a small apartment in a city in Mexico. Three months, starting in February, so he would be back in time to plant.

Lorna put down her coffee. "Dad. You are 78."

"I know my age."

"I mean, if you fall. If you are sick. I would be eleven hours away by plane."

"You are twenty minutes away now," Elmer said, "and I could fall here."

"And I could be there in twenty minutes."

Elmer was quiet. Then he said what he had not told anyone. "I am afraid I am too old. I am afraid I will be there four days and want to come home, and everyone will say they told me so."

Lorna said, "I do not want to be the one who says it."

"I know."

He has had the same table at the same café on Sundays for thirty years. His tomato beds are in the yard. His wife, Bonnie, is buried a few minutes away and he visits on Tuesdays. Going means Tuesdays when he is not there with her, and he has not decided how that will feel. He has done the arithmetic too. This is a year when he can still carry his own bag up two flights, and he does not know how many more there will be.

These are illustrations, not quotes. Short stays often cost more per month than a yearly lease, here 1,350 more over three months. Elmer chose that so he could try it without signing for a year.

Lorna did not change her mind. She asked, "What would make me less afraid?"

They wrote it on the back of an envelope. Elmer would send a message every morning by nine, even if it was only a thumbs-up. Lorna would keep a copy of his pills, his doctor's number and the address of a clinic near the apartment. His return ticket would be one he could change. His neighbor Mitchell would bring in the mail.

"And if on day four you want to come home," Lorna said, "you come home. I will not say a word."

"You will say one word."

"One," she agreed.

The night before the flight Elmer packed at the kitchen table. The pills went into a plastic box with the days of the week on the lid. Next to them he set Bonnie's small travel clock, the brass one that never kept time but had gone with them everywhere. He did not know if it belonged in the bag. He put it in anyway.

He set the alarm for five, and then he stood for a minute with the house key in his hand. He hung it on its hook. He took it down again and put it in his coat pocket.