“Do you remember when your father died?”
“Yes,” my father said, looking up with wide eyes. “That was two days before my master’s results came in. He never got to see them.”
“That was May 1950,” he added. “My father was very old. In his 80s at least, perhaps more.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“My mother lived a long time after that,” he said. “She died after I came back from Saudi Arabia. That was in 1986.”
He was quiet again.
“Her father was very old. When I was in high school, he was still alive.”
Now my father’s eyes got wide again, and he held his hand in the air.
“Her father was very old … perhaps 100!”
And now he was quiet again.
“Yes … ages were long on both sides of my family.”