Al is the last of Georgia’s generation left at Concord Lumber. Armand, Terry, Joe, and Georgia, they’re the guys I met when I showed up twenty-five years ago. A generation ahead of me, they knew everything, smiled easily and often and brought the past to the present. Georgia farmed the land Dan’s house sits on.

I’d filled the bed of my truck with tomorrow’s supplies when I noticed Al without his dark wraparound sunglasses. I walked up to him and I didn’t say hi, I didn’t even catch his eye first.

“Did you go to the funeral?”

Al looked at me and said,

“It was private.”

“Where?”

“Up to St Bernard’s. My plot is there too. About from here to the box away from Georgia’s.”

“The box” is the slider width room with a space heater where Georgia stood and waited for each truck to stop. He’d walk out of his box and match your lumber to your invoice. “The box” was twenty feet away.

“I heard he died about two weeks ago.”

“A week ago Wednesday. It was private but I went anyway. I went and ate my lunch.”

Eighty-four year old Al talks like I do. He’s way too sparse on the details. Like painting by numbers with half of them missing.

“What do you mean you ate your lunch? Did you go to the grave after the family left?”

“I sat in my truck next to my plot. I watched from there and ate my sandwich. There were only about ten people at the service. When they left I drove away.”

“Only ten? He had like two families. His own and he raised his wife’s sister’s kids after she died. And everyone knew him. You couldn’t drive by without stopping to talk for ten minutes. What about his sister from Tennessee or was it Washington?”

“And he had brothers, but there were only about ten. No one would have known he even died except it was in the paper.”

“And it was you who told me he was sick back in June. I went to see him at Emerson after his surgery, but he was out of it. He didn’t know me. Did you see him at home?”

“No, I did see him at Rehab. He said he felt so good he didn’t know why he was there. But you know what? He died just like they told him he would. They said eight months and that’s how long he lived.”

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Georgia always greeted me like his long lost best friend. I split my time between LIttleton and Concord Lumber and he’d chide me for being away so long, and he’d tease me when I worked in far off places like Newton or Wellesley. Said he’d been to Boston once and would never go again.

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Past stories about Georgia.

Here and Here.