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NEIGHBORS

By Terry Gray

          I watched the cars across the street, the unsmiling strangers moving slowly to my neighbor's house. Faint light revealed blank stares, proper accompaniment for the unbelieving. 

          It was early morning and the ambulance had just left.  No sirens or lights cried out for attention as it pulled from the drive and made its way to wherever, unhurriedly.

          My neighbors, an elderly couple, kept to themselves.  I had often seen them climb into their toolbox-adorned truck on their way to repair one of their rental properties.  I watched them mow their grass in summer and shovel snow in winter.  I noticed the personal touches that make a house a home.

          I had not spoken to them much, a hello here and there and cursory conversations concerning weather and the like.  I asked for their vote at election time.  I waved to them, and they waved back.  I didn't even know their names.

          Which one had left in the ambulance?  Which one's absence would I feel from my distant relationship with them?  Would I notice much at all?  There would be no effect on me, the detachment already apparent as I sipped my coffee and watched the weather channel.  My tomorrows would be the same except for the direct influences on my life, unrelated to the lives of others.  But never-the-less, it picked at me.

          How did we become so far removed?  Twenty-five years ago or less, all the neighbors would have been scrambling to add comfort.  Lunches and dinners would have been made for the grieving, releasing that person from one more burden.  Flowers and fruit baskets, churches praying, neighbors helping neighbors were what made a neighborhood and gave depth and identification to who one was, where one lived, and how we all related to life.

          We read stories of death in far off places and feel little.  We suffer not at all from the disasters that affect someone's life somewhere else.  Now I suffer not at all from a possible death only as far from me as two front yards.  I write this story and think about the coming snow.

          Since the beginning of man, we have known about death.  We have fought it with science and religion and have come no closer to ridding ourselves of it.  We run from it, and still it catches us.  We have removed ourselves from it.

          When the time comes to address my living neighbor, I will be polite and, if his or her spouse has died, will offer my condolences.  I cannot be sincere in my sorrow, though I do feel compassion.  I can say nothing good or bad about the person.  I'll never know the things that my neighbor laughed at, whether or not my neighbor liked beets, or if my neighbor had aspirations beyond my limited knowledge of him or her.  I'll never know the childhood joys or pain of my neighbor.

          I don't feel that keeping a distance from one's neighbor is anything more than selfishness.  We fail to take the time to discover and enjoy one another.  We don't stop for the extra second to ask the true questions and to volunteer a piece of ourselves for the friendship pot.  We wonder where our neighborhoods have gone and along with them our security.  We get our news from around the world, buy things from strangers on the Internet, and fish in distant streams while we ignore the things that make our neighborhoods a home.

          For that at least, I am sorry.

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