I always know when he's thinking. He sits like Rodin's thinker, head in one hand. Lost in thought..

"What are you thinking, Dad?" I asked, sitting down in the high backed deck chair beside him.  It was getting dusky out.

He looked up at me with wide, round milky eyes.
These were not paranoia thoughts. I could tell he was lucid.

I am wondering why I lived. More than 45,000 men from Canada died in the service. I saw so many fall. Held some of them in my arms. My friends. Friends I went to war with and I watched them die all around me. Explosions and then arms and legs everywhere. Men dead. Men injured. Some lived through the battle but died from their injuries. So many men, gone.

More than 50,000 injured. Staggering back, some of them. Shellshocked. Missing arms or legs. There we were, coming back from war, and there was men pushing men in wheelchairs. How were they supposed to provide for their families, those men? And I came back not just alive, but with both arms and both legs. And sometimes I wonder why, why me....

I reached out and put my hand on his.  He shook his head slowly back and forth. I know that gesture by now. He wasn't finished. I stayed silent.

And my brothers and sisters... all gone. Mom is gone. Dad is gone since I was a boy. There's no one left. Just me. And I think about why I was left behind, why I outlived them all. And I think I know why...

He lifted his head slowly, as if it was painful. Looked right into my eyes. 
"Why, Dad?" I asked gently. 

Mary...

It was as though that name ripped tears out of his very soul. Silent tears streamed down his cheeks. I watched the tears leave dark splots on the boney knees of his grey pantlegs.

My little sister, Mary. She was only 8 years old when she died of diptheria. Only 8 years old. So small. So small to die.

He was sobbing openly, now, dabbing his nose with white cotton, his voice almost a whisper.

We were too poor to buy her a tombstone. Dad was already gone and Mom had to work hard to make enough money to feed us kids. Milking cows and selling feed and even making moonshine. She did anything she could to feed us kids. It was hard for a widowed farm woman back then. Mom asked a neighbor to make Mary a wooden cross. Probably traded him cattle feed for it. Anyways, he made a nice cross and we put that cross on her grave... but when the church burned down years ago, Mary's cross burned down, too. Lots of crosses burned down when that old church went. So many unmarked graves left behind and one of them is my sister.

He stopped to blow his nose. Looked off into the weeping birch as though he could see yesteryear in the streetlight that shines through the birch leaves. It was getting dark. He breathed in deeply. Continued...

One day, after your mother divorced me, and I was sitting in my first apartment alone, I wanted to die. I figured I had enough. Enough pain. Enough of life. Enough of working like a slave all my life to try get ahead just a little bit, only to end up alone in an apartment with no home and no family. I tried to drink myself to death. And then I saw a vision. I wasn't blind yet and I saw it with my very own eyes. I saw the Virgin Mary appear in front of me and she was holding a mummy.

He looked at me, haunted.

Do you know what a mummy is? he asked me. I nodded, afraid to speak. Hoping he couldn't see me crying in the dark.

I would have thought it was because of the drink, but it happened again, and I wasn't drinking then. I saw her again. Two times, I saw her. In my room. And the second time, I saw that it was me she was holding.

He stopped and took a deep breath.

And that's when I knew that there is something I need to do here and that's why I'm still here.

We locked eyes, and his eyes looked clearer than I've seen them any day before or since.

A tombstone for Mary, he whispered. That's why I'm still here. I'm the last one. If I don't put a tombstone on her grave, no one will know my little sister is in that unmarked grave. No one will know and no one will care. And she was only 8 years old.

His face twisted into a grimace then, and tears streamed down his cheeks. I kneeled in front of him and hugged him. He held on tight and I felt his tears on my shirt.

Will you help me? I am blind now, and my days are numbered. I have a tumor in my stomach. I heard the doctors. I can't forget Mary. I can't. Will you help me get a tombstone for Mary?

He looked at me, eyes filled with pain. I hugged him, wiped away the tears and promised him I would. I steered him gently to happier topics. Not too quickly. But he is so very easy to distract. Tears forgotten, I got him laughing over silliness. Gave him a bedtime snack and lots of hugs.

I didn't go back to work that night.

It haunts me still, the look in his eyes - the tears making his sun weathered skin look soft and vulnerable.

And while it makes my heart ache when he is not all there mentally, gone off into his world of paranoia and suspicion, there are times when the moments of lucidity ache - even more.