Jacob awoke early in the morning on Sunday and stretched out his limbs beneath the flannel sheets on his bed before carelessly tossing them to the side and off of his body. Jacob sat up and half yawned before catching a whiff of his own morning breath and cracked a slight smile and smacked his lips together in disgust. He stood up and after adjusting himself walked down the stairs to his kitchen where a *** of coffee was already brewing having been programmed to do the night before. When the coffee was done percolating, he poured himself a cup in a mug that a student who had graduated years ago had given to him for his help with her English Lit thesis. Jacob drank his coffee black and could not understand why anyone would ruin the taste by mixing it with sugars and cream. But again he thought that of he were truthful he didnt understand much about people at all anymore anyway. He was out of touch with the outside world after his wife had passed away a little less than a year ago. She always kept him up to date with current events and trends, always made sure to keep him social. And without her around he had become a hermit only leaving the house to occasionally show up for work or go on hunting or fishing trips alone.
Always alone.
Today Jacob decided that he would spend the better half of the morning catching up on the world around him as he walked to his front door and opened it wide letting a bright vast amount of sunshine in nearly blinding him before his eyes adjusted. On his front porch was a stack of newspapers from everyday for the past three weeks. Jacob took the top five off of the stack and went back inside to his kitchen table and sat down after making a second cup of coffee, this time adding a splash of Kentucky bourbon. He unfolded the top section of the first newspaper and skimmed the headlines trying to catch something that would hold his attention. There was war, casualties, politics; none of which he felt like stomaching on this early morning.
He flipped to the comics and scanned the panels, laughing a silent chuckle at Garfield and a few others but folded the paper back up in disgust and tossed it towards the pile of other papers when nothing caught his attention longer than a couple of seconds.
Jacob sipped his coffee and stared into the dark black liquid until he saw his reflection staring back at him. He was disheveled, could use a shave and a haircut. His eyes, always the brightest blue, now looked dull grey, bloodshot, and sunken slightly into his forehead causing his eyebrows to become a prominent feature on his face. He wondered when the last time he had seen himself was but could not recall. He stared at the reflection and did not recognize the man staring back at him so he started to talk to him like a lost friend that he had not seen since the early stages of childhood.
Jacob caught up with the black coffee version of himself, handling both sides of the conversation in slightly different voices discussing his life story since they had last parted. How he met his future wife early in high school and how they could not stand each other initially, went to college on a football scholarship but fell in love with the English department and academia as a whole, how his girlfriend became his fiancé when he proposed to her while on vacation in upper Vermont, how they were married on a sandy beach in Hawaii hours before a hurricane came and the island was evacuated. He told his reflection about his three children - two boys and a girl - and how they had grown up, how he had finally got tenure at his alma mater, how his wife had succumbed to the cancer that had plagued her for the last few years of her life...he stopped at this part of the conversation and stared once again at the coffee and past his reflection. The coffee rippled from a tear that had been welling up in his left eye before slowly falling down his cheek into the coffee. Jacob stood up with the cup in his hand and emptied it out in the sink.
He rested his hands along the linoleum countertops and peered out the kitchen window, watching the breeze make the small birch tree branches sway and dance gracefully. He thought to call his children and see how they were doing but remembered that it was still too early in the morning in their part of the country. The sun was now shining in the backyard and if he looked hard enough he could see birds landing in his grass to eat worms and insects before flying back off to where they came or to where they were going. Jacob wished silently that he could be a bird and just fly away.
"There's no sense in all this dwelling," he heard a voice say from out of nowhere. For a moment he stood very still and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up before he realized the voice was his own. He did not know he had spoken but knew that it had been said and tho he did not quite feel it, he knew it too be true as well. Jacob let a heavy sigh leave his body and felt a change come over him that started in his outer limbs before spreading inward. He felt a renewal of energy cling to his life.
Jacob went back upstairs to the bathroom and once again studied his face in the mirror. His beard was salt and pepper and he decided it looked rather good on him but needed a trim. He removed the beard trimmer from one of the cabinets and put on a number three guard, trimmed the hair, then replaced the guard with a number two and trimmed again. He looked at the beard and admired the length, color, and thickness and decided that it was how he wanted it.
Next he looked at his hair and tho he needed a haircut he decided to just brush it back and to the side holding the unruly pieces back with a small amount of pomade.
Jacob's grey eyes began to lighten to a sky blue.
He walked to his room and found the cleanest clothes he could find: a pair of blue jeans, fitted black tshirt, and a dark blue button down blazer. He addressed himself in the mirror hanging on the door after dressing and thought to himself that he looked quite respectable and felt very much like a gentleman.
Jacob looked at the photo of his wife on the dresser and smiled at the memories that he cherished deeply of her and his hand drifted towards it and his fingers gently traced the outline of her cheek. He smiled again when he felt the tear roll down his cheek and he knew that he was okay and that everything was okay. It was the most alive he had felt in months.
Dedicated in part to B.