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Eight months after losing my wife of 43 years, I thought the worst the quiet could do was keep me company—until a freezing Thursday in a Walmart parking lot, when I gave my winter coat to a shivering young mother and her baby. I figured I’d never see them again.
I’m 73, and ever since my wife Ellen died eight months ago, the house has felt too quiet.
Not peaceful quiet, but the kind that settles into your bones and makes the refrigerator hum sound like a fire alarm.
For 43 years, it was just us.
Morning coffee at the wobbly kitchen table. Her humming while she folded laundry. Her hand finding mine in church, squeezing once when the pastor said something she liked, twice when she was bored.
We never had children.
Not by choice exactly, not by accident either. Doctors, timing, money, one bad surgery, and then it was simply the two of us.
“It’s you and me against the world, Harold,” she used to say. “And we’re doing just fine.”
The bed feels colder.
Now the rooms feel bigger.
I still make two cups of coffee some mornings before I remember she isn’t coming down the hall.
Last Thursday, I took the bus to Walmart for groceries. Canned soup, bread, bananas, and half-and-half, the brand Ellen liked. I don’t even use cream, but habits hang on tighter than people do.
When I stepped outside, the wind hit me like a knife. One of those Midwest gusts that makes your eyes water and your joints swear at you.
Her lips were starting to turn blue.
I was squinting against the cold when I saw her.
A young woman stood near a light pole, clutching a baby against her chest. No car, no stroller, no bags. Just her and the wind.
She wore only a thin sweater, hair whipping around her face. The baby was wrapped in a threadbare towel that looked more like something from a kitchen drawer than a nursery.
“Ma’am?” I called, as gently as I could, walking toward her like you’d approach a frightened bird. “Are you alright?”
She turned slowly. Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear.
Maybe it was instinct.
“He’s cold,” she whispered. “I’m doing my best.”
She shifted the baby, tucking the towel tighter around his little body.
Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the empty house waiting for me. Maybe it was the way she held that child like he was all she had left.
I didn’t think. I just shrugged out of my heavy winter coat.
Ellen had bought it two winters ago. “You look like a walking sleeping bag,” she’d said, tugging the zipper up to my chin. “But you’re old, and I’m not letting you freeze on me.”
“Your baby needs it more than I do.”
