The Final Meal – The Last Enchilada – BETWEEN THE TRACKS

The evening light on 2nd February in Gilbert, Arizona, was the color of copper pennies when Al Wilsey made his final request.

His voice—raspy from the years his body had weathered like an old fence post in a thunderstorm—carried across the bedroom to where Roberta sat.

“I want Mexican,” he said.

Just that. Three little words that carried the weight of a lifetime.

Al’s body had been betraying him for years. Diabetes had come first, then pancreatitis, then kidney failure that led to dialysis treatments that left him exhausted but still smiling. His feet, taken one at a time by surgeons with kind eyes and careful hands, were just another chapter in a book of suffering he never complained about reading.

The phone call to Nando’s Mexican Cafe reached Ava Littau, whose heart was bigger than the Arizona sky. When Al explained he couldn’t pick up the food because he was bed-bound and saying his goodbyes to this world, something in his gentle honesty reached through the phone lines and wrapped around Ava’s heart.

“There was a truth in his voice,” Ava told a reporter later, her eyes glistening. “The kind that stops you cold and reminds you what matters.”

The restaurant staff moved like a small army of mercy. They prepared his favorite enchiladas, the sauce made from scratch that morning. They wrote a note in handwriting that slanted with hurry but curved with care: “This one’s on us. You’re in our prayers.”

When the food arrived, Roberta’s tears fell like summer rain. It would be Al’s last meal on this Earth.

I’ve written about kindness before. But sometimes a plate of enchiladas isn’t just food. Sometimes it’s proof that in this broken world, love still finds its way through the cracks, carrying the light of human goodness like fireflies on a summer night.

May you rest in peace my brother.

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