The Bench.

THE BENCH

By Johnny Sprecher

Ruth was nearing 90 years old when her husband Lenny passed. They had met in college at Ohio State. She was a freshman, he was a junior, and on a hot August Saturday after he graduated with a business degree, they were married on the small farm where she was born and raised, just like mother. It was a tidy ceremony of family and close friends, the shade of a yellow birch tree serving as the altar, with a hodge-podge of borrowed folding chairs and a couple picnic benches as the chapel. The retired pastor who had baptized her pronounced them husband and wife.

As lives go, they lived a rich one in every sense of the word. Right around his twentyeighth birthday, Ruth six months pregnant with their second son, Lenny mistakenly stored a half dozen soda bottles in the freezer of his Tastey Treats and the next morning, he had invented what would quickly be found in every Tastey Treats across the country. It was Ruth, as she sat with five-year-old Ronnie lunching on his soup, who came up with the name Slurpee.

I know this because Ruth told me the story one morning, sitting on her bench that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico beach that was effectively the back yard of her home. Not all of it, just the Slurpee part. I would learn the rest, and not too much more, on the occasional occasions that I shared her bench.

They had already long retired to their beachfront home when with my wife and kids, we had the opportunity to relocate from dreadful winters to the house across the street. That was twenty-some years ago, and Lenny was beginning to lose his eyesight, or so I figured, because he truly had coke bottle glasses and she always drove. He was a small man, as some old men become, with a slow and frail walk that betrayed his age and his eyes. He was balding, wisps of white hair that she no doubt cut. He tended to like plaid short-sleeve shirts, khaki shorts and white socks pulled up much too high. I don’t recall his shoes. The times that I would see him, which were seldom, was when I happened upon him at his mailbox. When I offered a hello, his reaction was always the same: at first a bit startled, then searching, then finding whatever unfocused blob I looked like to him. He responded in kind, then quickly closed our exchange with his signature: another day in paradise. And into the mailbox he dug. I often wondered how he traversed the six or eight stairs from his front door, down the slight slope of his shell-packed driveway to the street, and back safely. Or why she let him. Maybe an act of defiance? Maybe she wasn’t home? I’d like to go with act of defiance.

But about Ruth’s bench. How it arrived there, atop a sandy knoll under a monstrous Australian pine with a panoramic view of what was essentially a private, unspoiled barrier island beach, I could only assume their adult children or some handyman had lugged it. Whoever and however, judging by its weathering and wear, that wooden bench had been there long before the new neighbors moved in.

I exercise every morning before work. When I finish, I take ten minutes to walk the beach path to say good morning to my God surrounded by, most days that is, the warmth of the sun, a sea breeze, the rhythmic sound of waves, a horizon of water that glistens like a million moving mirrors, and colors so vibrant and rich no camera can ever truly capture. I breathe, deeply, into my soul. I say my thanks. I commune.

When I can, I close my day with the same routine. Ten minutes before sunset, off I go, iPhone in hand to capture the artistry du jour: purples, blues, baby pinks, hot oranges and this meteorological phenomenon call the green flash. Most people can’t see a green flash. More don’t believe in it. Cameras really can’t frame it. But it’s true, it’s a contract between nature, atmospheric conditions and the human eye, and I’ve seen hundreds. Although best viewed on cloudless dusks, a cloud-mottled sunset with God light streaming from heaven will give any green flash a run for its money.

It’s the sunsets where I first noticed the two of them together. Ruth was taller than Lenny, but also a couple years younger, healthier and stronger. Time seemed to have not beaten her up as it had him. So one evening, as I was waiting with smart phone in hand, I heard thunder behind me and turned around to gauge its proximity because, in Florida, lightning can often arc and strike ten miles away. It was then that I noticed Ruth with her life companion, holding his arm, leading him the last few steps to their bench. Where they sat. And waited for the sun to dip below the horizon, the curtain falling on another of their many days together. It was utterly charming. And a helluva sunset.

A few mornings later, after my post-workout chat with my maker, I turned to walk home. Ruth was on her bench. Alone. Seeing me, she waved. I returned the gesture. That was our first interaction. We had been living across the street from these old folks for two months. I wondered how many times she had seen me, and how many times I’d not seen her. I wondered if she wondered what I was doing when I went to my knees. Sand on my knees. I always thought that’d be a great name for a story.

Ruth wasn’t always there in the morning but, when she was, she was always alone. It was probably two weeks later that I saw her again. Only this time, her wave to me was a wave to come over. I accepted the invitation. She invited me to sit down, a rickety old lady on a rickety old bench. I was sure I was gonna break it when I sat. The bench seemed to strain under my weight, expecting Lenny’s one-hundred-fifty or whatever pounds. But it held.

Ruth wanted to know all about us. She was so delighted to see young children in the neighborhood. She laughed and explained that the place was full of old folks. I had to smile at her observation. She asked questions. I shared more, that my wife was pregnant with our third child. She told me our baby would be the first ever born on this dinosaur street. It was obvious this was no ordinary seventy-something at that moment in her life. She was smart. She was sharp. And, as it turns out, she wasn’t just Lenny’s wealthy wife, the mother of three boys and some kind of tag-along for life’s ride. She was, as I learned, an accomplished nature photographer whose images were most often wowed over on the

In the eighteen years that we shared as across-the-street neighbors, we never once were invited to their home. Or vice versa. They were relatively private people who were quite content, it seemed, in coming down the final stretch with dignity and privacy. I would never speculate as to any other reason than the declining health of the love of her life, and her desire to protect him and safeguard him another day, another day.

But one day, I don’t know when, Lenny was gone. It was never really announced or proclaimed official somewhere, as these things go, that I was aware. It was just for me a confluence of time, and routine, and absence of one of the lead characters in this daily thing

I call my life.

So, about Ruth’s bench. It was probably another two or three weeks before I began to realize that, upon returning from my sunset sojourns, I would see Ruth and her bench and not Lenny. And it was clear that, the only thing Ruth was seeing at this time was the sunset. Or the course of her life. Or the loss in her life.

It was a Friday night in August. About this time of year, sundown is right around eight o’clock. I remember telling my wife I’d be back in about twenty minutes or so. The sunset this night was a gorgeous, cloud-rich night with golden streaks of crepuscular light illuminating the stairways to heaven. I captured what I could with the latest update of my iPhone cinematic setting. I said a quick prayer of thanks.

And there was Ruth on her bench. Only tonight, she was watching me and waiting for me. So when she beckoned, I answered.

I sat. I waited. I didn’t want to speak my speculation about Lenny. Funny, neither of us said anything for the longest time while the evening closed in on us. Fortunately, there was a good breeze from the south that kept the bugs at bay. Finally, she spoke. She told me their sixty-ninth anniversary was eight days earlier, on August seventeenth. She told me of his passing in the night in his sleep. She told me of the horror of the realization when she awoke and he didn’t. She told me of the hole in her soul, a hole she could literally feel in the middle of her torso that seemed the size of a fist. She told me of calling her boys. She told me about each child’s reaction. She told me her middle son was callous. She told me she called some funeral home. She told me he was cremated. She told me his ashes are on our beach. She told me she wanted to die there, too, so that one of her children would spread her ashes with his, uniting them again forever.

I don’t know when Ruth died, or where she was. She wasn’t across the street. I know that because as I was walking to the beach one morning, as I always do, I had to cross paths with a maybe forty-year-old loudmouth and a familiar older gentleman who was my neighbor from somewhere. They were arguing about a rule that prohibited for sale signs in front of homes. He wanted to sell that house fast.

As I was passing toward my ultimate morning goal, I couldn’t not overhear. I paused.

Then I stopped. I turned back to the adult kid. I told him that his parents were special. I told him that his mother was my friend. I alluded to our times shared on her bench. He told me to fuck off.

I shared with him that for years, someone mysteriously returned their trash cans from the street to outside of their garage. And that was me. And that there were folks who watched over their home when they weren’t there. And that was us. And then I walked away. I never saw him again, but I did see a for sale sign on their lawn.

I did not see anyone spreading anyone's mother's ashes.

Some weeks later, I chose to approach the lonely bench. My first reaction was to feel the trespasser, but the home was unoccupied and seeking another owner. I studied the old wood, the seat, the back, the arms all weathered by blistering sun and salt spray. One of the seat slats was now unattached, a fact I hadn’t noticed before, as the bench had never been vacant in my company. I decided to sit. The view was perfect, the setting tranquil, the sirens of wind through pine needles almost heavenly. It felt like a holy place. It's where I then chose to end my nightly pilgrimages to sunset. I had become caretaker of Ruth’s bench.

Ultimately, one day, their house was sold. New owners who made a brief, cameo appearance departed. Our lives carried on. Babies to children to high school to college, in a blink of the eye. Right, Ruth?

And what of Ruth’s bench? As I made my daily treks, there it sat.

Every morning. Every night. Every moment.

At some point, I decided I wanted it. I debated picking it up and taking it home. The new owners wouldn’t notice or care. But that was stealing. So I rationalized that, if the new owners garbaged the bench at the road, I would grab it and keep it forever. It was a sacred bench, in a sacred place, honored by sacred people who were blessed to have found each other and loved each other their entire existence in this dimension, and hopefully beyond.

I failed. I failed miserably. I failed to recognize how mercurial and random life is. And that when you have the moment to act, to honor, to preserve, to love, to do what you want or need to do, you don’t wait.

But I failed. My failure was swallowed by a furious, ravenous, historic hurricane that two days prior wasn’t really on our radar, literally or figuratively. But there on the west coast of Florida, on a September Wednesday, in roughly three hours, lifestyles and lifetimes were in tatters, thousands forever.

When as a family we were finally able to traverse our war zone in real time versus some NOAA satellite image, we mourned greatly for our loss of innocence or grand illusion that your world will always be your world.

And then, at some point, I finally ventured across the street.

Australian pines are probably great in Australia. On an American beach, their root system fails to burrow down. It spreads out. Making these huge, majestic, weighty trees easy to uproot and topple over.

Ruth’s bench had kept watch under not one, but two of these Australian pines. Both

uprooted. Both baring a root system that was huge, terrifying and reminiscent of gaping, consuming monsters from Stranger Things and similar horror cinema.

It’s been almost a year since the hurricane, or more likely a tornado, hell both, destroyed our house. Now, it's a pile of dirt. What was Ruth’s home is somewhat intact but significantly damaged.

Over these many months, I’ve returned to my pile of dirt countless times to stay connected to a leveled street address that was and still is our home — a home we hope to one day resurrect — as paper thin or odd as that connection may sound. Every visit, I’ve also gone back to that beach. Every visit, I’ve searched Ruth’s battered yard and other trashed or abandoned yards, in the hopeless hope that this bench I failed to save somehow survived. However, an old lady’s makeshift pew against a twelve-foot wall of crushing salt water and thousands of pounds of uprooted trees should not stand a chance, like so many lost causes and last chances in life. Time to give up, right?