A Blessed Man

I remember him as if he had just died yesterday. Everything in me wished he was still alive.



It all started with my daily walk in the park one brisk fall morning. There was an old rugged bench alongside the path that I took for my daily walk. It was always empty until one day an elderly man made that bench his home. His clothes were ragged, dirty, and dark. The shopping cart sitting next to him wasn’t any different.

As I walked by him he would stop me and insist that I take a small piece of chocolate candy. Me being my ever so righteous self I graciously took it from him, but I wouldn't eat it. How was I to know where it had been? After a while he started giving me a dollar bill instead. I asked him why, and he told me it was because I wouldn't eat the chocolate. Again I accepted it, but I didn't spend it just in case he needed it back at some point.

This continued on for a while. After too long I stopped counting the number of days. I started talking to him and getting to know him. The stories he told were those of fairy tales, but the way he dictated them to me made me wish they were true. He never talked about the situation he was in. It always intrigued me as to how he could smile every day in the condition he was in, but I could never truly figure it out. He started telling me about all the times he helped people when he was younger, and all the great things he did. After every story, he would insist to me that he was the most blessed man on earth.

I started to get angry with him. The audacity of someone like him to think of himself better than what he was. I couldn't even stand to be around him. But the more I thought about it, the more I wished that I saw the world through his eyes. He was always happy every time I saw him. Eventually I started to really feel for him.

He kept getting worse and worse. On the last day I saw him alive he took me aside and asked me to make sure that this one thing was written on his tombstone: “Here lies a man who was given little wealth, but was truly blessed.” Of course I asked him why he wanted that specific phrase, but he wouldn’t tell me.

There weren’t many people at his funeral. For some strange reason the man’s last name wasn’t posted anywhere or mentioned at all during the proceedings. After the preacher was done I took him aside and asked why this was. He handed me an envelope. This is what it read:

For years I searched and searched for my prodigal son. The day he left me and my wife destroyed me. But as my wife lay on her death bed she told me to find her son, my son. So I set out, searching high and low, through every valley and mountain until I finally found him. I was about to give up until I decided to sit on a small park bench one day for a rest. I had seen his picture so I knew the moment I saw him that he was my son. Enclosed you will find a gift for you. I told you on the day you left me that I would always take care of you.

Shocked and stunned I quickly grabbed the other item that was in the envelope. It was a picture of him, with my mother and I. We were all so happy in that picture. It was the last time I remembered being happy. I turned the photograph over and these words were written on the back:

“I never stopped believing in you.”