"Down!" I shouted at her. "No jumping!" It's not my style to be shouting in my customer's homes, unless they're shouting at me, in which case I've been known to dish it back after my breaking point has been reached. The breaking point just got a little closer with the Pomeranian.
Frank was a rail thin senior, sporting a Boston Red Sox ball cap. He wore a thin jacket in the house over wrinkled clothes. With red-rimmed eyes and wispy grey hair poking out beneath the hat, he was an older version of my brother-in-law Lee. Spitting image, aged twenty years. I marveled again to myself how there seems to be a Divine set of molds we are all made from, with archetypical patterns for each brand of human. Frank was in the Lee mold and wore the very same worried expression I've seen on Lee's face.
"I'm losing all my food," he explained. "The fridge stopped working a day ago. It's just been sitting there. I only go shopping every three weeks since they took away my driver's license."
Refrigerators are one of those modern conveniences you cannot live without. You can get by if your dishwasher fails, or the washing machine. But not the fridge. A warm fridge is a breeding ground for all kinds of bacteria. A home-bound senior whose nearest relative is a daughter in Maine surrounded by uncaring neighbors who loses a fridge is in a crisis. I was hoping I had the part on my truck and could get it back up and running for the guy.
"I lost my wife last year," Frank said, seating himself stiffly at the kitchen table. I noticed old pill bottles, faded prescriptions and yellowed newspaper clippings strewn on the table top. "Breast cancer. We had been married close to sixty-five years." At the mention of his wife, his red-rimmed eyes began to fill. I thought they would soon spill over and trickle down his face, but he had been grieving a whole year now and was nearly cried out. You don't live that long with someone and not feel pain when they leave you.
My folks were married half a century. After my Dad's passing, Mom would speak of him rarely. He was verbally abusive, and I think his being gone gave her some relief. Only once did I see her stifle tears at his memory, but that was after he had long been dead and the memory of his verbal put-downs were softened. Frank was a tender man, not giving to verbal assaults as far as I could see. There was a deep kindness about him. I would have enjoyed his company more were it not for the asthmatic Pomeranian frantically pacing the kitchen now demanding my attention.
"She thinks she the boss," Frank explained. "She's a rescue. I got her after my wife died. It's just me and the dog."
I was able to get the fridge up and running. It was a bad cold control and I luckily had the part on my truck. We spent some time sorting through his frozen foods to see what was safe to keep.
"My daughter said Stop & Shop has a food delivery service," he said as I was packing up my tools to leave.
"It's called Pea Pod," I said, nodding.
"Helluva' name," he said.
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