Hello In There

We've gotten very tired in my house of answering the landline telephone from what looks like a local number, maybe even close to the phone number of someone we know but it's actually some jablone trying to sell solar panels or the automated drone voice of someone who claims to be from Apple or Microsoft or the Social Security Administration and we must 'press one now' or something just awful will happen and it'll be our fault. 

Almost all of these robocalls wait for the person answering the phone to say something otherwise they go silent and move on. I mention all of that because shortly before 11 Tuesday morning the phone rang and the Caller ID said it was a number in the 203 area code (Connecticut down in the New Haven and Fairfield Counties area) and we didn't answer. The caller left a message for my wife whose name (and phone number) they had from our long-time next-door neighbor.

The caller said she'd ben trying to reach our neighbor for a number of days and was now worried and would Sigrid please knock on the doors and ring the doorbells and make sure she was okay. We've lived alongside one another all the years since we arrived from Germany, so since November 1991 and our neighbor was always there with a smile, a little something for the kids as they were growing up, fresh-baked cookies at Christmas. In other words, one of those Currier and Ives tableaux.

We went next door and banged and rang to no avail. Sigrid looked through the mail slot and saw a stack of mail on the hallway floor and that's when I called the Police Department and the dispatcher promised to send a car to conduct a wellness check. Actually, four cars showed up and eventually, they figured out how to get into the neighbor's house and, as you've guessed I'm sure, they found her dead though no one offered an idea of how long it had been.

We saw her very nearly every other day for close to twenty-eight years but I couldn't tell you when I last saw her or how long her garage door had been open. She was eighty-two years old and people who tell me 'she led a full life' mean well I'm sure but are full of crap and I hope they don't offer that believing it be of solace or comfort to any of her relatives.

We're all we have and sometimes I think we may spend too much time and energy arguing with one another over what we DON'T have in common, losing sight of all those things we share. For me, this is another reminder that the next time I say hello to someone it could be the last time.
-bill kenny