She is gone. The house is empty; a shiny red realtor’s sign is placed in the yard. She left unnoticed, the neighbors didn’t give her a farewell; no cards or well wishes were exchanged. She lived in this neighborhood for 25 years; everybody knew her, but nobody felt close to her.
Sometimes, when I at least expect it, I come along a story that makes my heart overflow with joy. It’s never one of the loud headline-bait stories, it’s always a quiet story, one that hardly will make it to the front section of any newspaper -even though that’s where it should be.
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me — not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, “There, she is gone,”
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”
And that is dying…
Henry Jackson Van Dyke
My neighbor had a heart attack. It had happened at the gym, right there in the locker room. People acted quickly, gave him CPR and the ambulance showed up just a couple of minutes later.
If you lost a bet and had to dye your hair a color of the rainbow for a week, what color would it be?
Well, I don’t have to lose a bet. I was born with a very boring hair color called, “Dishwater blond.” That says it all, doesn’t it?
My neighbor across the street is fighting the demon so many of us will have to fight in our lifetime. She has cancer, stage IV, and the outlook is not good, not good at all.
There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
My husband hasn’t smoked in 4 months today. 120 days without cigarettes is quite an accomplishment, for someone who used to smoke for 46 years.
“You set the bar pretty high,” he said, and I almost felt sorry for him. I know I did; I quit so easily, I knew right from the start there was no going back.
There is a scene in the movie “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” where Judi Dench sits on the roof of a building in Mumbai, and she talks to her business partner about her private life and concerns.
My next door neighbor to our right is an 81-year-old woman, her name is Virginia. She lives alone, got divorced in the 80’s and never re-married. Virginia is a very active lady. There is a treadmill in the middle of her TV room and she walks on it every day.