Won't You Be My Neighbor?

(I had been trying to finish this post for days...now a few weeks later...)

The other night the husband announces that one of our neighbors had recently passed away.  This was news to me, since I thought I saw her just a few days ago mowing her lawn (apparently not).  He found out by asking another neighbor about some recent movement at her house that suggested she had moved or that someone had moved in.

Anyway, what irked me was the manner in which the husband made the announcement--as if he was telling me something very random, like the trash needing to go out.  How could we live across the street from someone for years and not know that she was sick?  Or worse, how did we not notice that we had not seen her in weeks?  We must be the worst neighbors in the world.

(Actually, I know that we are not...a recent story was released about the death of a former Playboy playmate whose mummified remains were found by a neighbor after a year!)

One of the great secrets about our neighborhood is that we look like the typical suburban haven often pictured on TV.  It offers the real deal of well-manicured lawns, attractive families, walkable sidewalks, racial and ethnic diversity, and the cherry on top of it all is that this all exists within the city limits! 

The problem is that like many city folks, we do not actually know our neighbors as well as we should.  We know them well enough to speak and wave, and we pay attention enough to know when someone buys a new car, but our interactions tend to be limited to whatever can fit in the space between locking the door of the house to the unlocking of the car door.  And despite the fact that I work from home, most of these people have no idea what it is I actually do for a living.  In fact, it was just a few months ago that I had an in-depth conversation with one of the neighbors across the street who went to school with me...

So I feel bad about not making much of an effort to know the neighbor who passed away.  Of course, a part of me knows that relationships are a two-way street.  Maybe she was not all that interested in us.  Perhaps she was a private person who kept to herself for a good reason. 

I still feel bad.  While we were dealing with my mother in law's illness, I cannot help but to think that my neighbor was dying and I was too busy to notice. 

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Today, I spoke to the people who moved into her house and talk about awkward.  My mind went totally blank and I scurried into the house to keep from looking even more ridiculous.  And then an hour or so later, her daughter drove up as I was on my way back out of the house, and essentially the entire scene repeated itself in reverse.

So now I feel like a loser...clearly the look on my face suggested that I know something...but I did not say anything!  Argh!  I am thinking that if I could rewind time, I might have come up with the appropriate response.  And that brings me back, full circle in a way to the initial issue--death is unfair.  It robs us of the chance to do or say the things we need to when the time is right or even when the time is wrong.  I am sitting here wracked with guilt because I never said anything more than hello to someone who lived across the street from me for close to nine years. 

And there is no solution to this, except I can hope that the next time I get a chance to say something, it will be more than just an awkward hello.  I am going to write a note of condolence to the family and while it will be several weeks after the fact, my hope is that the gesture will bring some small measure of comfort--even if it is coming several weeks after the fact.  As for my other neighbors, I will continue to speak and hopefully, they will attempt the same.