I was sitting next to a kind-hearted old man on the park bench.  The sun was glimmering and the sky clear. The air of autumn brushing over us. His familiar eyes scanned the park and eventually landed on the kids playing with the Frisbee across on the opposite end of the grass. He seemed to be trapped in his mind as if he were trying to remember something. Something important. With a tired sigh he asked, “How did you get that scar?” pointing at the faded lines on my leg. 

“We were in a car accident a few years ago,” I replied. 

“With who?” 

“What?”  

“You said ‘we’ and how are you doing after that, it must have been frightening.” He asked the question with pure sympathy in his eyes.  

“I was driving with my dad when someone ran a red. I’m ok now but my dad struggles a lot.”  

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, I bet you’re a great help to him,” he smiled. 

“I like to think that I am.” I hope I am. 

He fiddled with his hands as he always did, looking at the wrinkles and the marks wondering how they got there. Looking at the fronts and backs of them. He then grabbed his bag and placed it on his lap. The weight made his scaly and wrinkled hands shake. With a great sigh he looked at it. I should really help him. He got as far as attempting to open the bag when the zipper got stuck. He tried pulling it up a few times. I should help him. After about a minute of this I said, “here…” as I put the bag on the bench beside me; unzipped it and took out the lotion. “Here you go,” I smiled.  

“How did you know I wanted that?” he questioned. Squinting his eyes at me in the familiar way he did whenever he was surprised or confused at something. With his thick bushy eyebrows pressing down on his eyelids.

“Just a lucky guess.” Lucky guess. 

His face unraveled and relaxed again. “So, how is your dad? You mentioned you look after him or something like that?”  

“Ya, he needs my help more now than he did before the accident a few years ago, he has good days and bad days. But he did tell me about a month ago that he wanted to be a little more independent so I’m trying to help him less with certain things.”  

“Thats very kind of you. I bet he really appreciates you.”  

I felt a smile creep up on my face. “Thanks, I hope he does.” 

“Who is he?” he questioned, looking at me with his face crinkled up in confusion again.  

“What do you mean?” 

“Who is he?” 

“What are you trying to say?” I asked. Trying to read his face. 

“We were talking about someone.” 

The smile now falling from my face. I knew there was no use in trying to explain things like this anymore. Just state the facts and hope he remembers. “We were talking about you dad,” I sighed. It’s getting worse. He continued to blankly stare at me. They told you it would get worse.  

“Oh, you look like someone I once knew. Where are you from?”  

I never got to say goodbye to the man I once knew. Some changes were immediate, others crept up on you slowly until it was too late to do anything about it. But over the years following the accident (and a few prior) he was constantly changing the doctors thought he wouldn’t make it a year after the crash because his old body couldn’t bounce back like it used to. My head felt heavy as we looked at each other. With him still staring at the kids his eyes were blank and glossed over. As I looked at him, I saw what he saw in everyone: an echo of the person he once knew. The auburn leaves continued to fall around us just to get crushed under the stomps of the kids playing on the other side of the park.