The old man is ninety years old and tomorrow he will be dead, but the boy has never seen death and does not understand that he will have to leave. The boy is only five and he wonders how old the old man, who is his great-grandfather must be. He looks in the mirror considers how different he looks compared to his baby brother and thinks that if such a rate of change continues throughout life then the old man is surely one hundred fifty years old or more.
The boy doesn't like visiting his grandfather because the condo where the old man lives smells stale and is always too warm. The condo is ugly too and even the boy's parents will admit to that, but they scold their child when he says so around the old man. When in private, the parents say that, 'it looks like something from the fifties'�, but the boy doesn't know what that means and assumes that 'the fifties'� must be an ugly place.
If the boy's great-grandmother were still alive, the boy would love to visit them because she was such a loving woman and would have spoiled the boy with candy and popcorn despite his parents discouragement. The old man's wife loved her grandchildren with all of her heart and vicariously lived a second childhood through them. She would sometimes dream about what it would be like to have great-grandchildren, but she fought a losing battle with lung cancer seven years before such a dream could be realized.
The boy thinks that the old man's face looks like the sculls that he saw during Halloween, but is scolded again when he voices such thoughts. He doesn't like the way that the old man's cheeks sink into his face and how his hair is so thin and white that it looks transparent, but he has learned to keep such opinions to himself. He also dislikes the way that the old man's enormous glasses make his eyes seem small. He wonders what the old man would look like without them, but will never know.
The parents love the old man and cherish every word that he says, even though he repeats things over and over again. The boy doesn't recognize the old man's speech as words though. He thinks that the old man is only making indiscernible sounds when he says something to the boy and so the boy only nods his head as if he were paying attention to what the old man has to say. For this, the boy's parents scold him, but the boy does not understand why. If the boy were older and could understand the old man's slurred, shaky speech, he too would love the fascinating stories of the World War that the old man has to tell.
But the boy can't understand what his great-grandfather has to say and the old man's wife is no longer alive and even with the scolding, the boy still thinks that the house smells of some unknown foulness. For these reasons, the boy does not care to visit the old man and he can not cherish or love being with the old man.
None of that will matter tomorrow though because after the boy and his parents have left and after all is quiet, the old man pass in the night. The boy will never know how the old man loved him or all the things that he will have taken with him to the grave.

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