Leonard and Hungry Paul

by Ronan Hession

While it wasn’t a career as such, he liked being a casual postman and was proud of the fact that he wasn’t taking up a whole job, depriving someone else of a living. Like a small denomination stamp used to make up the balance due on a larger package, he simply covered the parts that needed covering.

Yes, our parents will grow old and yes they will get sick and yes they will die, but that will happen to us two as well. Where you’re wrong is that you think that’s a problem in the future. But it’s not. The answer to that problem is to spend time with them now. Be in their lives so that when the worst happens—which we hope is many years away—there will have been ten, twenty, however many years of Scrabble, University Challenge, curries, walks, gardening and whatever else behind us. And then, when the time comes we’ll know what to do. Not because we’ll have it all figured it out but because we will have had the habit, the practice, of loving them and being with them, and the utter clarity that comes with that.