Old men can be strange, cantankerous, humorous, embarrassing, humiliating, and full of life, even if their mind and/or body betray this at the end. Charles Gould Langshaw grew up a stiff-upper lip WASP wearing Brooks Brothers suits, wing tips, starched shirts and gray flannel pants. In his senior years, such attire was only for special occasions, instead he prefered shorts and Red Ked sneakers. But when one is old, the best of both can easily blend, right? so why not Red Keds and gray flannels? And for an 86-year-old man, not much time is left, and accordingly, not much time is left for his 54-year-old son with the old man. As the clock ticks faster, the pace of time collides with gravity, and so time is of the essence. A trip from the simmering heat of the south, back to where the two generations of a school legacy spent some of their personally most important times of their young lives, takes father and son on a trek from the Sunshine State and the Peach State to Dublin, New Hampshire...and back to their past. Good memories and a rebirth of a relationship can assuage the scars of the earlier rough years of father and son, in sometimes odd and humorous ways. And it never is easy when travelling with a hard-headed octogenarian, through today’s air transportation system, the anticipation of disaster being just behind curtain, but one never knows, it might work out. In the end, as they say- it’s the journey, not necessarily the destination, and so one has to take the tangible with a grain of salt, while trying to experience the intangible. Life at the end of life can be better than any of us can imagine, but of course, it cannot happen without a bit of heartbreak. In the end though, if you do it right, it is all well worth it.
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