This story is crazy. A guy had Crohn’s Disease, an intestinal disorder, so severe that he needed surgery and afterwards, he couldn’t eat.
For the first meals after I was home from the hospital, I tried joining them at the table, a happy-meal family, but my starving presence disturbed the kids, and I’ve been marooned on the love seat or exiled to the bedroom ever since. The silver-dollar-sized burgers and petite seeded buns excite the boys, and they yammer with mouths full of food, their speech garbled by chewed meat and bread soaked in warm juices. One after another the patties fall, cutting down the pyramid of sliders, and I can only watch and listen as the plate gets swept clean. Our six-year-old kneels and turns on his chair. He has taken a momentary break from the carnage, his mouth a juicy mess, and he trains me with a severe look. “When will you eat?” he demands in a voice complicated by vulnerability, the worry that afflicts all children whose parents get sick. “Soon,” I lie. “Tell me about the burgers.” [Esquire]
