Part 1 He Made Me Promise Not to Cry
“Promise me you won’t cry.”
That’s what he said, three nights before the morphine made his voice go soft. “I’m just takin’ a short trip.”
And like a damn fool, I promised.
I’ve worked as a nurse at Maple Hollow Senior Home for twenty-three years. You learn a few things in that time: how to fake a smile through back pain, how to catch a fall before it becomes a hip replacement, and how to hold someone’s hand while they take their last breath.
But nothing — and I mean nothing — prepared me for Mr. Frank Delaney.
He was ninety-seven when I met him. Ex-Army. Pacific theater. Said he was stationed in Okinawa but didn’t like to talk about it unless it was raining. “Rain,” he once said, “makes the ghosts louder.”
Frank had these old, thick hands like tree bark — curled from arthritis but still able to crush a handshake. Always wore his cap inside, the one with the faded golden stitching:
WWII VETERAN
U.S. ARMY — 1943–1946
He came to Maple Hollow after his wife, Alice, passed. No kids. No living siblings. Just a trunk of medals, a photo of a woman with Hollywood curls, and a Bible duct-taped together at the spine.
The other residents didn’t know what to make of him. He didn’t play bingo. Didn’t like Jell-O. Didn’t care for television. But me? I sat with him every Thursday at 3 p.m. sharp, like clockwork. We played gin rummy and talked about the “good old days” — even though most of those days weren’t all that good, if we were being honest.
“I ever tell you about the time I stole a general’s Jeep?” he asked one afternoon, squinting at his hand of cards.
“No,” I said, “but I’m guessing it didn’t end with a medal.”
He laughed, one of those deep, wheezing belly laughs that rattled through his chest like a wind-up toy with grit in the gears.
“That’s the thing, sweetheart,” he grinned, “it did.”
Over the months, Frank became my anchor. When my mother died of a stroke, it was Frank who pulled me outside and said, “Don’t let grief rot your insides. It’s like vinegar in copper. It’ll eat you hollow.” He handed me his cigarette — the one he wasn’t supposed to have — and we sat on the back patio in silence, just breathing the same autumn air.
He told me about Alice. How she loved jazz and wore yellow even when it didn’t match. How he came home from the war and found her working the counter at a Woolworth’s in St. Louis, wearing the exact same yellow dress she’d worn in a dream he’d had in Okinawa.
“I walked right up to her,” he said, “and told her I already knew her voice. That God must’ve let me borrow it while I was away.”
And that was that. Fifty-eight years. No children, but hundreds of handwritten letters, most of which he kept tied in a shoebox under his bed. I read one once, after he asked me to. Alice had drawn little doodles in the margins — tulips, mostly. The handwriting looped gently, like a slow waltz.
Last winter, Frank started fading. The weight came off first — his belt buckled two notches tighter before he even noticed. Then his appetite vanished. He’d stare at the mashed potatoes like they were puzzles he no longer cared to solve.
By January, he was coughing blood.
By February, he couldn’t stand.
And by March, the morphine started.
That’s when he made me promise.
It was late. Past shift change. The halls were quiet except for the humming of the vending machine and the occasional call bell down the corridor. I was sitting by his bed, refilling his water and adjusting his pillow, when he reached for my wrist. His grip was weak, but still sure. He locked eyes with me — those sharp blue eyes dulled only slightly by time.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m heading out soon. I can feel the train pulling up.”
I tried to smile. I’d heard this kind of talk before — residents talking about trains, elevators, doors opening in dreams. It was part of the process. But something about the way Frank said it — calm, settled — it felt different.
“I want you to promise me something,” he said.
“Anything,” I whispered.
“Don’t cry when I go. Don’t you waste tears on me. I’ve seen more than most should. Lived longer than I deserved. This ain’t goodbye. It’s just a short trip. I’ll be back before you know it — probably raisin’ hell in some cloud’s backyard.”
I laughed, partly to humor him, partly to keep my throat from closing.
“Promise me,” he said again, quieter this time.
“I promise.”
He died on a Wednesday morning.
The sky was gray. The kind of dull gray that doesn’t move. Rain pattered the windows, soft and steady.
He didn’t say anything that day. Just breathed slower and slower until there was nothing left.
I sat with him long after his chest stopped rising. I smoothed his hair, the way you do when you want to hold onto something. I pulled the blanket up. I kissed his forehead.
And then I broke my promise.
I cried so hard it hurt. The kind of crying that rattles your ribs and makes your nose run and blurs everything around you. I cried for him, for Alice, for Okinawa, for every Thursday at 3 p.m. that would now be empty. I cried because the world lost a man who had once held it together with nothing but grit and a pack of Camels.
We held a small service. Just me, the chaplain, and two orderlies. I played Ella Fitzgerald on a portable speaker — “I’ll Be Seeing You” — and laid a single yellow tulip across his chest.
In his Bible, tucked between Psalms and Proverbs, I found a folded note in his handwriting.
“If you’re reading this, I’m gone. Or maybe I’m just nearby — I never was good at long goodbyes. Don’t grieve too long, sweetheart. Go dance in the rain. Go live a little reckless. And if you find someone who laughs like Alice did — marry ‘em. The world’s hard, but love makes it worth the bruises. Be kind. And don’t you dare cry. (Okay… maybe a little.)”
Frank Delaney never had a statue. No kids to pass down his medals. No parade.
But I carry him with me. In every veteran I greet. In every jazz record I hear. In every game of gin rummy I play with an old hand that shakes too much to hold the cards.
He made me promise not to cry.
And I broke it.
But maybe that’s the point.
Maybe love isn’t about keeping promises.
Maybe it’s about keeping people — tucked quietly in the soft corners of your memory — long after they’ve taken their short trip home.
