Old Man Gilbert

            Old Man Gilbert lived the next farm down the road from ours.  Back in the sixties, it was a time of fun to be a kid.  It seemed meanness in the world did not exist.  Or maybe it did, we just never knew.  But as kids, we played where we wanted and how long we wanted.  If it was a day of no work in the fields, we played and rode our bikes.  But we still stopped off to pay our respects to kindly neighbors.  And one such neighbor was Old Man Gilbert.  We called him that because he was old.  But never to his face.  Instead, we called him Mister Gilbert when talking to him.  Even as kids we knew he was old.  But we enjoyed him.  He seemed to know something about everything.  I guess because he had lived so long.  But we could tell Old Man Gilbert was getting even older.  He forgot things and barely did much walking.  He had one son who did not live with him.  But realizing the old man lived alone, he gave him a dog.  It was to be companionship for the old man.  But it was becoming more of a chore for the old man just to keep him fed.  The dog was young and needed more activity than to sit around the house with Old Man Gilbert.  So, there was not much time given the dog.  In fact, he never even named the dog.

            I was a little girl and very close to my brother, David.  It was he and I that visited Old Man Gilbert the most.  The old man seemed to enjoy seeing us come.  While David was more into talking with him, I played with the dog.  And when we got ready to leave, the dog would follow us out to the road.  I really believed that dog wanted to go with us.  But we led him back to the house, opening the door and putting him inside.  The companionship thing wasn’t working for the dog or for Old Man Gilbert.  But I guess he didn’t want to tell his son.  It could anger the son if he had to take the dog back.  After all, it seemed to fill the hole made by the son.  He didn’t visit as much after giving his Dad the dog.

            One day David went alone to visit Old Man Gilbert.  When he returned, following close behind was the dog. 

“You need to take him back,” I said.

“There’s no taking him back,” calmly David said, “Mister Gilbert gave him to me.  He says he won’t be in need of him where he’s going.”

            “Is he moving?”  I asked.

            “I don’t know!  That’s just what he said.”  David paused, then spoke again, “I couldn’t refuse him and so I brought Gilbert home.”

            “Yea, I named him that after my friend, Mister Gilbert,” David said before I got the chance to ask.

            It was David again that went the following day to visit Old Man Gilbert.  Following behind, was his dog, Gilbert.  It was David who came back to the house saying he found Old Man Gilbert motionless in the house.  As Mother and Daddy went to check, they found Mister Gilbert had passed away.

            “Is that what he meant when he said that he would not be in need of him where he was going?”  I asked David.

            “I wonder that myself,” replied David.  “When I found him like that, Gilbert went up to him and licked his face.  I pulled him back.  Maybe he and the dog were closer than we thought.”

            I always wondered about all that myself.  I do know Gilbert lived out a long and healthy seventeen years.  It was a good life for a dog.  Both he and his original master may now be somewhere finally walking together.  Ironic as this statement seems, it becomes obvious to me that anything is possible.  We just have to believe.