My Friend Sam

My 90 year old friend, Sam, who feeds me, and talks to me, and treats me like the human that others forget that I am, looked at me from his hospital bed, and I saw a tiny sliver of his humaness and personhood slipping away.

He fell last week, while out shopping without me. I couldn't reach him and he not me. I found out he was in the hospital, only because some old lady who I drive back from the supermarket sometimes, if she catches me, told me about it.

Today they took Sam to a rehab hospital, but he and I were not sure what it was he was getting fixed. He felt good, looked fine, but spoke of working as a stevedore in San Francisco fifty years ago in the middle of a sentence of wanting to live the free life, unencumbered by anyone not invited in.

Alone when he wanted to be. With others when he wanted to be. I think that's over.

I don't know what to do.

Joe Postove