Ok, so now I'm really depressed. Back when we were all in the same boat, so to speak, and everyone in the neighborhood who had stayed thru the storm was cleaning up, and sharing stories and pizza and laborers, electricians and plumbers, we had all thought we ought to have a block party to celebrate surviving Sandy.
The party never happened, of course. The camaraderie sort of dried up as the basements did, and washed away with the mold. The neighborhood went back to the way it was, everybody sort of knows each other, but is too busy to get together about anything much.
I've discovered lately that everyone ELSE knows each other rather well, but I'm still the outsider, having lived here only 15 years. But that's another story, I suppose.
The real story is, other than the renters who have not come back at all, and a house or two that are now for rent that used to be owner-occupied, and one guy who has not yet been back to his summer cottage, but I can understand since he lives in Hoboken and probably has issues there as well, the "regulars" are here. So make that seven households out of the 18 or so homes on the block. I'm guestimating, don't feel like going out and counting, it's dark out and I'm not quite over thinking we have an after-dark curfew (which disappeared easier than the mold did, when summer started). Oh, and I'm not counting the new people who bought just before the storm and I, at least, don't really know at all.
And of those seven households, as of Saturday, two of the nominal heads of household have died since the storm. Tony and George, both 64, both born in July, so neither one quite made his 65th birthday. They knew each other forever, it seems they all grew up around here and never left.
Tony learned, just after the storm, that what was initially diagnosed as pneumonia was actually lung cancer, which aggressively spread thru every part of him almost before anyone understood what was going on. George had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. They had thought initially that he also broke his neck, when he collapsed, but that was disproven. However, he went into the hospital and never came home. Apparently he had been out for too long, and had minimal brain activity, and so it went. Better, in my opinion, to have taken only a couple of weeks, rather than 9 months, like the husband of a friend of mine in Canada. Just thinking of the financial impact (not to mention stress on the other members of the family) of an extended, hopeless, hospital ordeal.
Still, and I guess this is the point of this discourse, two of our very local Sandy survivors are now dead, and I really think their deaths can be attributed at least in part to Sandy. They were strong, but maybe not strong enough, and I think the added strain of having their houses and lives wrecked helped them along, not in a good way.
Each of them was basically a good man, depending on the context in which one knew them. And George was one of only two people who knew how to keep my boiler going long past its use-by date (the other one is in jail for killing his son-in-law - maybe it's something about that boiler, but it died in the storm and is now sitting in the basement inert and waiting for a metal scrapper to want to work hard enough to remove it).
Yes, I knew them from around the neighborhood, but not very well. And both men had sons who gave my son a hard way to go when we first moved here, and were a large part of why I spent an awful lot of money I really didn't have to send my son to private high school.
But even with a mixed history, I feel their loss. It's like another tear in the fabric of life here, which was already in tatters. We'd all been stitching it back together, bit by bit, but now the stitches have burst, again.
This post of yours hit a nerve. In large part because I'm 62 and learn a bit too often, nowadays, of friends who've died of sundry causes. My world is slowly becoming depopulated of people who've personally meant something to me. In some cases, the dearly departed meant a great deal...meant all the world in some cases. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteSo it goes. But I'll leave you with a germ of an idea: I live in a predominantly Black neighborhood (in point of fact, I'm the only Caucasian)...I like my neighborhood because my neighbors are the sort of folks who fire up their BBQ grills on weekends and spend the whole day sharing food with...well...everyone. I eat well during the summer. I truly do. Do what they do. Drag the Weber to the sidewalk. Fire it up, let the smoke blow all around and cook up a storm. Offer your victuals to passers-by, or, if that's not enough, bring your cooked goods to their door (that's what my neighbors do). Put a little soul into your 'hood. It'll do you (and everyone) a bit o' good.
I think, where I live, if I set up a grill (I'd have to buy a new one, my old one is at the bottom of the river along with a lot of other stuff), I'd be feeding people from Jersey City and Bayonne and Brooklyn, rather than the people who live here. Bennies. The locals hide out on weekends, since you can't get anywhere anyhow because of the Bennies clogging up traffic.
ReplyDeleteThen there's the fact that I eat very little meat anymore, so I'm no longer very good at cooking it. Shrimp on the barbee, anyone?
Maybe once the summer is over, and everybody is done grieving for a while, I can agitate to set something up and get the neighbors together, and have an excuse to meet the new people. At least here we have people - my Mom knows someone who lives in another neighborhood who is the only person there, still.
Meanwhile, I upped my Vitamin D dose, and I feel a little more cheerful, so if nothing else the psychosomatic effects are working. Now if we can keep anyone else from kicking off, the rest of the summer....