When Nancy Hettinger had her stroke at 70, the combination of her husband’s pension after many years of service to the newspaper, his conservative investments managed by a national firm that once upon a time people listened to, and his wise choice of Medicare Supplemental Insurance ensured she was well provided for when she was hospitalized for three weeks, followed by a month in a first-class rehabilitation facility.

Upon returning home, she continued to benefit from the security of their finances which provided for twice-a-day in-home care to prepare and serve meals, as well as a daily visit by a registered nurse who checked her progress, accurately administered her regimen of medications, and bathed her and changed her bedding and clothing.

            When his wife was being bathed, her husband Earl, five years her senior and always a rather courtly gentleman, if not downright squeamish about his wife of 50 years being unclothed, even from the earliest days of their marriage, would gather up his coat and his cane and with a plain, brown paper bag of stale bread or perhaps remnants of the meal prepared for them the night before and head to the park down the street and around the corner to sit and ponder life while feeding the squirrels until the nurse would tap him gently on his shoulder to tell him she had completed her duties and his wife was now resting comfortably.

            Sadly, Nancy passed three days after her 75th birthday, and after a small funeral and even smaller gathering afterwards in the basement of the Presbyterian church she and Earl had attended sporadically for several months beginning with the world’s unfounded fears of the potential catastrophes anticipated with Y2K, Earl rented a car and over a three-day period drove to Niagara Falls, a spot they had once entertained as a destination for their brief honeymoon, ultimately opting instead for a long four-day weekend at a Best Western in Independence, Missouri, that featured two-room suites and a 24-hour-a-day swimming pool, as well as a hot tub, something neither of them had experienced before or since, where he stood in the cold spray of its tumultuous churning and cried silently for his loss, before the three-day return trip.

            Once back home in the apartment he and Nancy had shared for the past 27 years, Earl resumed his previous schedule of gathering up his coat and cane each afternoon and heading down the street and around the corner with the same plain, brown paper bag to the park where the squirrels already were hopping and jumping and generally skittering in place while waiting eagerly for Earl, who attracted more of the squirrels than any of the other elderly widows and widowers scattered on the benches around the park, his unique mixture of stale bread and table scraps combined with small pieces of his dear departed Nancy’s body he hacked away each morning and left on the counter to thaw.