Everyone laughed when they sent an eighty-year-old man and his eighteen-year-old wife off to spend their wedding night together. “Let’s see if Grandpa can make it until morning,” one relative joked through a burst of laughter. He didn’t respond. He simply picked up his old briefcase and closed the door. When six relatives opened it the next morning, they stopped laughing when they discovered what he had been protecting all night.

On Saturdays, Chloe would cook dinner at Walter’s home, Hannah would arrive with dessert, and Brandon would stop by to catch up on family news.

Even Nancy learned how to brew coffee exactly the way the old colonel preferred it, making it pitch black with no sugar added.

Two years later, Walter passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of eighty-two.

The night before his passing, he had enjoyed a full dinner, argued lightheartedly with Brandon over a football game on television, and called Chloe to remind her to check the oil levels in her car.

The following morning, he simply did not wake up.