An Elderly Patron's Final Checkout
One of my first posts here was A Day in the Life of a Mobile Librarian. I have since returned to a job at a more normal library, but I still have one monthly outreach delivery. I am writing this post to honor the passing of one of my library patrons, an octogenarian who resided at the assisted living facility here in town where I visit monthly as part of my job. This is a re-posting from Steemit.
"Alfred," as I shall call him here, was confined to a wheelchair, and his memory was fading, but his eyesight was good until the end, so he didn't require large print books. That made feeding his voracious literary appetite much easier.
He loved westerns, both old and new. Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, and C. J. Box were among his favorite authors. I tried to add some extra options for his monthly fiction selection, and occasionally I hit on something good, but for the most part, he knew what he liked and he wanted just that. He enjoyed Patrick O'Brian's naval adventures and Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, for example. Someone else had recommended Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of romantic time travel historical fiction to him, so he asked to try them. I promptly brought the first few. When I returned a month later, he declined the rest and said he didn't know what the other person could have been thinking in recommending them to him. I haven't read them myself, but based on the synopses online, I can see how he would have found it too heavy on the romance and too light on the adventure.
He liked history, and wanted a lot about war, especially the US Civil War and World War II, but I once made the mistake of bringing him a Lincoln biography. He gestured to the Confederate battle flag hung in a corner of his room, and indicated his distaste for the 16th president in no uncertain terms. I suspect he had studied enough history to be properly suspicious of the mythology surrounding "Honest Abe, " and had immersed himself in the confederate revisionism of the noble South fighting the tyrannical Northern political despots and their business cronies. There is some truth to that, and a lot of overlooked inconvenient facts about the Confederate cause, but there is little to be gained from arguing such matters with an old man, so I just noted the need to avoid overt Union sympathies in the books I delivered.
"Alfred" was also a Navy veteran and member of the local VFW hall. I find it a bit odd that he was simultaneously patriotic and a Confederate sympathizer, and I don't recall any indication of latent racism in our discussions. He liked a lot of subjects besides military history, so I would like to think I had a decent gauge of his personality. I brought him many books about sailing and treasure hunting. He also liked local history about the natives, fur trappers, miners, and cowboys of real life.
I don't know whether he had any close family still living. He had friends who sent him lots of paperbacks from thrift stores. I know he will be remembered by others in the world. But it still seems odd to know that nothing of him remains except an overburdened bookshelf of ratty novels likely destined for a dumpster, and this blockchain blog where he is anonymized so only those who knew him already could have a chance of recognizing him here at all.
In any case, rest in peace.