Goodbye, Mister Jim

Mr. Jim died last week, he was a regular at the place I have eaten breakfast most mornings since my retirement. I have known him about thirty years, ever since I started going there he has been a regular, and was for years before that, so I have been told. He used to come alone, a small almost birdlike man limping in well before seven most mornings, untouched by the querulous focus on ailments that are often the mark of age. Always polite and inevitably cheerful, he made light of his own infirmities. Later he used a walking stick and towards the end a walker, folding it carefully and placing it out of the way of the other patrons.

I got his story bit by bit over twenty years of short, early morning conversations. He was a Second World War man, a green soldier, twenty-two years old in 1944, he was part of the American 9th Army and found himself in the Ardennes Forest on Christmas Eve 1944.
That’s where he was shot in the right knee. He tied a webbing strap around his leg and tightened it with the spoon from his mess kit, then he passed out. When he came around two days later he was in a field hospital. He missed Christmas altogether that year he told me with a grin. They told him when they found him he was so cold they thought he was already dead and that was likely the only thing that saved him. His leg however they could not save and so Mr. Jim came home and got an artificial leg, which together with its periodic replacements he used for the remainder of his life.
Last week he was not feeling well and did not make it in for several days, and on Thursday he died in the hospital. He was 88 years old.
Mr. Jim and I talked about many things over the years and neither he nor I really believed there was some other place that people go after this one, but if there is, and Mr. Jim is there, I hope he has his right leg again just like when he was a boy, because 67 years without is long enough.

Author: Low Wattage

Expat Welshman, educated (somewhat) in UK, left before it became fashionable to do so. Now a U.S. Citizen, and recent widower, playing with retirement and house remodeling, living in Delaware and rural Maryland (weekends). View all posts by Low Wattage