The Old Man Didn't Make It

The old man was my neighbor, on the Upper West Side. Our apartment doors faced each other, and we had a respectful and friendly relationship. He was a hale 76-year-old Irishman when I met him. I was amazed by his vigor. When I moved into the building he walked up to me and shook my hand with a strong grip and leaned in and said, "You're only one of four Irishmen in this building."

Then he winked, as if I was now in his exclusive club.

He was an archetype: an elderly Irishman with silver hair and a jaunty walk. I'd be walking home from work, slumped and weary, and he'd cruise by me and shout, "Hello, lad! Beautiful day. How are the kids? Good! Good! See you later!"

He'd lived his whole life in Manhattan. This city ages you. The pace alone can make you bitter and half-crazy. All those bright young things now clogging up the city's streets will learn this. Their skin will dry out. Their faces will take on that frazzled New Yorker look, like they're sucking lemons. Some will turn into crazy old bats, talking to cats and dogs.

But not this guy. The city never broke him. I always had the sense that he was tougher even than New York, and that they don't make them like him anymore.

He had made his living in real estate, and once told me the secret of being a landlord in New York.

"Rent to older black men. They appreciate it when you keep up the property. They keep to themselves and they pay their rent on time."

I would see the old man almost every night, striding down the street to fetch takeout dinner for his ailing wife. He'd come up the block with bags swinging and a big smile on his face. Had a hello for anyone who looked his way.

Some nights I would sit out in my back hallway and smoke. His kitchen door was right in front of me. I could hear him and his wife hanging out in the kitchen?which is what the Irish do?laughing and chatting. Married over 50 years, and he was still laughing at his wife's jokes.

Then the old man had a stroke. Two weeks in the hospital took their toll. Now his jaunty walk became a shuffle. Sometimes he needed a walker to make it to the lobby. A few months later, cancer took hold of his stomach and he started to waste away. When he first got sick, I dropped by his apartment and gave him a book on Sinatra. He loved old New York stories. To thank me, he dragged himself out of bed to buy flowers for my wife. The man had class.

Then he died. I went to the wake and sat on a couch, watching his family speak their memories of him. One thing the Irish know how to do well is a wake. They're in the major leagues when it comes to dealing with death. His daughter handed me an old photo album and I sat and looked at it. The years fell away from the old man, and he became, again, a handsome young sailor in uniform during WWII. Then he was a postwar groom, sharp in a tuxedo, and wearing the same smile that I'd known.

I quietly said my goodbyes and took a funeral card. He would have liked it. It had printed on it one of those heartfelt goodbyes that only the Irish could have come up with:

"Grieve not? Nor speak of me with tears? But laugh and talk of me as though I were beside you. I loved you so? 'Twas heaven here with you."