The Good Neighbor

  My former neighbor died today, he was one of the best neighbors I ever had, when we moved to Sweetwater there was only one other occupied house on our hill and Bill and his wife Louise lived there along with Bill’s teenaged son; my husband traveled on his job and was sometimes out of town for days even weeks at a time and I wasn’t used to that, frankly I was scared to be so alone where I didn’t know a soul. One evening the doorknob fell apart in my hand and I called the only person I knew, I asked Louise if she thought her husband could come to look at it for me and she said he was on his way, I asked if maybe she should ask him first and she assured me that he was on his way, he even went to Kmart and bought a new one and put it on for me, I was so thankful. Once in the middle of the night I heard a loud noise outside that obviously meant someone was prowling around, I called Bill and he came with his gun to investigate and found…an animal jumping around inside the boat where we stored aluminum cans. He stopped at the power board one day and told them that they needed to replace the street light outside my house, it kept going out and when they’d check it, it seemed okay so they kept telling me there was nothing wrong with it, again, I was scared alone in that big dark house; Bill got it replaced with one visit where my numerous phone calls had failed. Bill gave a good reference to Homeland Security when my youngest son needed his security clearance, Bill had been the only person besides us who had been there as our sons grew up, I was so proud of them and it made me feel so good that Bill was too. His wife Louise died not too many years after we moved here and he remarried, the neighborhood grew, more houses, more people, the families grew too, grandchildren now visit.  When I sent my oldest a message today to let him know, his first thought was “How is Anna?” She always had popsicles for the children who visited and a couple of years ago she gave one to my grandson as he was visiting from Wisconsin. I hate to think about her losing Bill, but she will never be alone, she has a family and good friends who will keep alive the memory of our …good neighbor.