{April A-Z Challenge} The Letter K

K is for ... Kindness

In 2004 an elderly gentleman walked into the optometrist where I worked and asked for a pair of reading glasses.

As we looked through the various options, he suddenly looked straight into my eyes and said, "You have beautiful eyes, they remind me of a leopard looking back at me"

I was hugely flattered to be compared to a wild cat and told him so.

He went on to tell me how he used to be a wildlife photographer with his wife and then suddenly says, "Are you a Gemini? You look like a Gemini - Feisty"

The man was spot on.

That man was John Sinclair. For 2 years we would visit me every single week, each time spoiling me with an anecdote, buying me lunch or my favourite railway coffee.

He recalled me with stories of his wife fighting with a leopard and her prey because they were messing up her tent, or the time he had milked a rhino just before she gave birth.

Tall tales! Or so I thought, until one day he comes in with a stack of photographs. All the stories he had told me were there on the photos - Incredible!

John looked through a few of my holiday photos and told me I had a good eye for photography & that   I should pursue it more. To this day, if I take a particularly striking photo, I find myself wishing he was around to see it.

One of the last gifts he surprised me with was a book of his that he had managed to track down at a 2nd hand book store. He paid R500 for his own book and wrote an inscription inside for me.

Some time later, we moved premises and the practice was just too busy to continue our regular visits. He stopped in from time to time, but one day he just didn't anymore. 

I found out that he had died in hospital after a fall broke his hip. I had missed the funeral and whoever had kept his phone had not informed everyone in the contact list.

He always said he was grateful to me for showing him kindness that very 1st day we met, but I always maintain that it was his kindness that enriched my life even more so.