Owen E. Dell

The Vet

Facing Mike on my doorstep, dressed in my Lands’ End polo shirt and my all-cotton cargo shorts, I felt I was being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. Looking at this man, who must have been born in the late forties or early fifties, a man who grew up, as I did, on hula hoops and Twinkies and later the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and who now looked immeasurably old and broken, I knew we were feeling a similar pain just then. I knew he understood that we’d been through the same time and had come out differently.