In a small suburban house, lived an even smaller man. Wisdom of many decades, and a long past acquaintance to war. He had lived in this very house since he met his wife; they had already planned out the rest of their lives. Conditioned as they were they managed life like it was easy. “Sugar in your tea Addie?” He would say every morning. She would always reply with a nod...Two sugar cubes would be plopped in the cup. Life was a scheduled recurring existence. Nothing ever changed and they hoped nothing ever would. This never bothered them. They were content in their days and were never bored, despite the lack of variety in their lives. He, a man who made an overeasy egg every morning. She, an old woman who still enjoyed reading large books, and bought even larger reading glasses to go with them. At the small two person kitchen table they would go about their morning routine. New morning light shining through the window illuminated the woman's literature, while it brightened her serene features. He loved her. An elderly couple, just as in love as the day they met. Days repeated over and over again in their perfect life. Slight variation, but days mostly stayed the same.
The funny thing about life is that it doesn't stay the same forever. As days went on, she got sicker. She began to have trouble catching her breath and soon after, required a tube pump connected to her mouth to breathe for her. She was weak. For the first week it appeared that she was getting better, but age catches up with life, and soon she couldn't leave the bed. Her mind was strong and her thoughts positive, but a deteriorating body will eventually cause the mind to weaken too... Within a few days, his wife had lost her ability to read. Blurry letters turn to blurry eyes, and despite a weak and broken body, Addie still found a way to cry. Perhaps the biggest tragedy of her long, sweet life. The normal, predictable life they once had was now a thing of the past and she was losing hope. To prevent his dear wife from giving up, he went to the Flea-Market that night and bought her a gray and white barn cat. A cat with eyes like a captive audience and perky tuffs of fur under his ears. She smiled when she saw him. They would spend hours sleeping together, the precious cat cuddled in the crook of her arm. The cat loved her, and her it. The cat became the change. Sadly even the light in one's darkness cannot prevent any real change...Addie died in her sleep on June 11th. Her husband distraught, no longer would he have the comforting touch of his wife, the satisfaction of making her breakfast and giving her two cubes of sugar. He was alone, but he still had the cat, who made him think of Addie, even if she was gone. The poor sweet animal took the loss quite hard. He refused to come downstairs, always peeking through the stairway rungs. ‘Will she come home yet?’ The new regular agenda for the man was filled with his depression and her absence. He still left everything, as if she never left... Two cubes of sugar dropped into the tea. Neatly folding her glasses and fluffing her now abandoned pillow. The man never went outside. The world began to grow around him and he acted as if nothing changed. Content in not changing a thing, the loss of his wife was enough for him. Soon, even the cat would come down from his perch and try to get the man to live again. The cat was the change. The man realized that by sticking his head through the stairway bars of life, he would never end up living it. What his wife would have wanted was for him to live the rest of his life with a sense of change, and that's what he did. Oskar Daniels at age 78 began to live again. Curiosity is the key to life. Perhaps it wasn't the cat that got killed by curiosity. Perhaps curiosity never killed anyone.