The Old Woman and the Bench

By Mary Elizabeth Gentle

The air was crisp with the chill of the early October morning. An old woman sat on a weathered bench in a small neighborhood park. The worn wooden planks of the bench had not invited her in with their comforting familiarity as they once had. The bench felt harder than it had the other times she had sat there. The bench knew something had changed. The old woman shifted slightly to lean her weight against the back of the bench, hoping it would again cradle her, as it had not so long ago. But, all she felt was the hard cold wood chilling through her woolen winter coat.

The old woman looked down to the rumpled brown paper lunch bag that sat on her lap. The bag was worn and had been used many times over. She moved the bag from her lap and sat it on the bench next to her. The bag was lighter than it once was, but still she felt the bench sag from its weight. It was the same heaviness that her heart had been carrying for weeks.

The old woman shifted again, she began to wonder if her trip to the bench had been a mistake. But, before her thought had been completed, the bench began to cradle the old woman, comforting her with its warmth and memories. The bench understood that there was now only one. There would no longer be two. The old woman reached into the lunch bag and pulled out her lone sandwich, she was comforted in the fact that for at least one hour a day, she could sit where they had once sat and feel what they had once felt. The bench had understood.