The stranger kept talking to my father when he could no longer answer

Dear Delyara, My father had advanced Parkinson’s disease and spoke so quietly that most strangers stopped trying after asking him to repeat himself once. At a café, an older man at the next table noticed Dad struggling to order. Instead of speaking to me, he leaned closer to Father and waited. Dad tried again. The man understood enough to answer, then stayed talking with him for nearly twenty minutes about football. The conversation was slow, full of pauses, and probably exhausting. The stranger never turned to me for translation unless Dad asked. Afterward, Father said, “He talked to me, not around me.” That sentence stayed with me. Dad died last year. Yesterday, I saw the same man at the café and introduced myself. He barely remembered the conversation. I thanked him anyway. Kindness had been ordinary enough to forget for him and important enough to remember forever for us.