Marvel at the Wonders

“Marvel at the wonders,” he paused, allowing the oxygen to fill his lungs. “That’s what the man once told me.”

My granddad sat in his wheelchair, the home to his body for the last six months. He stared out the window towards the vivid tapestry of color that floated slightly above the mountains, reaching and feathering into the firmaments. He had a reverent look in his eyes and his body remained perfectly motionless, save for the periodic rise and fall of a chest that was pleading for oxygen.

“Who’s this man?” I asked as I moved over to the window.

Granddad peeled his eyes from the heavens to glance for a moment in my direction.

“I never knew his name,” he said, returning to his gazing.

He chuckled, a grovely chuckle that came from deep within his chest and led to a short fit of coughing.

“It’s funny, for a while I thought he was saying ‘marvel at the weathers,’” he struggled to tell me. “The man had such a hard accent about him, he was near impossible to understand. At the time, I didn’t think it much mattered what he had said, the man was mad... Marvel at the weathers,” Granddad laughed, “Who would say such a thing?”

I took my place in the visitor’s seat.

“Did you ever learn the man’s name?”

“No. Never cared to ask.”

“And where did you meet him?”

“Why, it was the strangest thing. Every night I’d take old Dublin out for a walk,” Dublin was Granddad’s dog. “And every night for twelve damn years we’d pass this fellow, sitting on a rock, staring out across a lake at the sunset.

“Every night for twelve damn years old Dubs would try and pull me towards that man and you know what that man would always say to me?”

“What?”

“Marvel at the wonders,” Granddad struggled to raise his hands and spread them outward in front of him, notioning towards the sunset before us.

“Or, marvel at the weathers,” I joked.

Granddad smiled.

“Or that.”

“Did you ever ask him what it meant?”

Granddad turned his head towards me.

“Ten years. That’s how long it took me to finally ask that man what he meant. I wasn’t feeling so great, I had skipped out on my classes that day, hired a sub, but when it came time to go on the walk, well, you better believe Dubs wasn’t gonna let me skip out on that. We got to the rock and Dubs started pullin’ like he usually did and the man, without budging a muscle says to us ‘Marvel at the Wonders.’

“Since I was already not feeling well I stopped. Dubs went and sat down next to the man and I’ll be, that god damned dog must’ve been looking at the sunset too. I walked up behind them both and finally asked the man, ‘What do you mean, why are you always telling us to marvel at the wonders?’ I asked,” Granddad looked at me and slowly wagged a finger, “I’d figured out by now that he was not saying weathers,” he grinned.

“That man looked at me, he looked me straight in the eyes, and do you know what he said? He told me ‘Look. You will see.’”

I smiled a little, Granddad didn’t.

“I tell you, I looked at that god damned sunset for a solid ten minutes. He never averted his gaze again, just sat there, staring at that ball of light.”

We both stared at that ball for a little bit now.

“Anyway, I finally yanked Dubs away and we went got out of there, headed back home.”

“That’s it?”

“Rain, wind, snow, it never mattered to that man. He was always there sitting on that rock and staring at that sun.”

“But you never figured out why?”

“I don’t know,” Granddad said. “About two years after that he just disappeared. Dubs and I would still go walking by but he never showed up again. He was older, so I always figured he might’ve died, but who knows. Maybe he found some other wonder to go and marvel at.”

We sat in silence for a time. The oranges turned to pinks and reds and purples.

“Why are you telling me this?” I finally asked.

Granddad kept silent for a minute.

“It wasn’t until a few years back when your grandma died that I thought I might have figured it out. I remember staring at her in that casket,” Granddad said. “Cold. Full of death. And I looked at your grandma’s face, memories filling up inside me. One phrase kept popping to the front of my head: ‘Marvel at the wonders.’

“I marveled at her that day. Not at the wonder of her death, but at the wonder of the impossible life she had fulfilled. At the wonder that she had fulfilled it with me. I thought of our trips around the world together. I thought of your father. I thought of our first date at the bowling alley. I thought of the times we went camping and hiking and the times we would sit in the front room of our house together, reading books. I thought of the way she would make that piano sing to me and of that wonderful beef roast she used to make. I thought of all the times we’d laughed together, cried together, smiled together and been afraid together. I thought of so many things. I thought of so many little wonders.”

I felt a tear roll down my face as I scooted closer to him and took his hand. He had a tear of his own forming at the corner of his eye.

“I don’t know if I ever figured that man out, but at that moment, I thought maybe I had. Every day we’d pass him by, staring at that sun, telling us to look at it, and every day we’d pass him by, taking it all for granted.”

I could tell Granddad was struggling, not just emotionally, but he was taking in more and more oxygen now. The sunset was starting to be consumed by the night, the colors fading into a deep and somber black.

“Marvel at the wonders. Look. You will see,” I heard him whisper.

We both looked out the window, hand in hand, watching the sun dip below the horizon -- a quarter gone, a half. I could feel Granddad getting colder as the sun steadily declined. But we didn’t speak. We didn’t look at each other. We didn’t need to. Instead, we sat quiet, quietly we marveled at the wonders.

The sun succumbed to darkness, and with it expired the bands of remaining light. Cold.

I looked towards Granddad, expecting him to be looking at the sky still.

He was not.

His eyes were fixed on me and all that I could think of as the tears began to flow down my face, was the words that strange man had repeatedly said: Marvel at the wonders.