I know, you beg to differ. To you, I’m just the handsomest best friend you could have, wildly funny, an unfairly talented writer, a great listener, a shoulder to cry on, generous to a fault, someone whose name appears in the Thank You/Acknowledgement sections of almost all the books my friends have written, a dependable source of Breaking Bad trivia and a dispenser of sage advice.
The only things I’m not are a ride to the airport, someone who’ll help you move or a guard dog for your laptop at Starbucks.
But despite all my many good qualities, I’ll say it again. I’m a terrible person.
Here’s why, and please pardon the abrupt shift in tone but the situation calls for it.
This past Saturday morning, the wife and I woke up to a fire truck and an ambulance at our neighbor Suzie’s house directly across the street from us. Naturally we were hoping everything was alright, but were curious what was happening.
We didn’t have the kind of relationship with Suzie where we’d be comfortable going over to ask what was going on. She’d moved in about eighteen months ago, and had been redoing her house for that entire time. Contractors coming and going from the house were just something we got used to, as was the shortage of street parking.
We’d met Suzie when she initially moved in, but hadn’t spoken to her hardly at all since. She was noticeably standoffish, not just with us but with other neighbors as well.
The prior owner of the house, Bob, had been a magnificent gardener. The front lawn was always impeccably kept, and beautiful rose buses adorned the yard. Since we looked directly at the house, we appreciated waking up to that view for years.
But since Suzie had bought the place, the front yard had gone to hell. The lawn was overgrown and underwatered, and the rose bushes were being given last rites.
And of course me, who can kill a plant just by being in the same room with it, never missed a chance to comment on her lack of gardening skills or her less than sparkling personality.
The ambulance was there for Suzie. I saw her wheeled out on the gurney, intubated and unconscious. She died a day later.
Yesterday I saw a truck in the driveway, and a woman going in and out of the house. I went across the street, introduced myself and asked what had happened. She told me Suzie had passed. She’d fought cancer for the past twenty-one years, and had been diagnosed with leukemia not that long ago, and was on some industrial strength chemo that apparently was too much for her body to take.
Her friend, who had known her for sixty years, went on to tell me what a welcoming person Suzie was, and how she worried about seeming so standoffish. She didn’t want people too close to her because of the chemo and her weakened immune system.
She also let me know how awful Suzie felt about the appearance of the front yard—how’d she’d wanted it to be beautiful not just for her, but also for the neighbors. She was just too weak to give it the attention it needed.
After a bit more conversation, she told me the house will be sold. In the meantime, the wife and I are going to have our gardner go over there and restore the front yard so it looks presentable and like someone still lives there.
I know it’s a new-agey kind of sentiment usually found on inspirational posters and those square day-at-a-time calendars Barnes & Noble sells at Christmas. And in a world seemingly fueled by judgement and hatred, it seems an impossibly quaint notion.
But none of that makes it any less true. It’s the lesson I have to keep learning. A little more kindness and a lot less judgement would make this world a far better place.
Not to mention me a better person.
Rest in peace Suzie.
