In the Autumn of Life

A shadow on the hall room wall, cast in hot bright stripes of the August sun seeping through the curtains, of his still forlorn head and shrunk shoulders ended abruptly like a cliff on both sides as he sat at the table, was what it took me to look at the despair, the melancholic social abandonment that had gradually descended his life.  Four slices of crisply warmed bread, buttered, waited beside a bowl of chopped cucumber on the plate. Just...