When I found him he was off the sidewalk, lying on his back like an upside-down turtle, jeans powdered white with snow. I thought he was having a heart attack until I pulled him up and got a whiff of him, saw how he was weaving, how gravity switched directions on him. He had one glove off, the cold metal of his door key clutched in the exposed, leathery skin of his left hand.
The sidewalk was a war zone in the blizzard; an above-average challenge for someone of his age and in his condition; the rocking and pitching concrete covered in a slippery fifty-centimeter glaze of Montreal’s freshest. He held on to a fence when the path was too narrow for both of us; stopped occasionally to breathe and to explain something to me but the effort was always too much and I never learned what he was trying to say.
Once or twice he landed on his knees despite a hand on my shoulder. I felt bad for his helplessness, for whatever had brought him to that moment, weaving home in the snow alone.
On the third attempt he managed to fit his key in the lock; I told him to take care then tucked my earbud into my ear and turned back into the snow. As I walked, I hoped that no bodies were buried in the banks I passed, bodies of lonely old men with no one to help them navigate their storms.