On rare occasion I am confronted with something so upsetting that I cannot find it in me to write about it, at least not for awhile. So it was Sunday.
During a meeting with some neighbors about how to deal with "the wall" (a sculptured concrete wall around parts of our neighborhood...a wall that is about to fall down), I learned of a death in the neighborhood.
A woman in her late 50s inherited her mother's home about 2 blocks from me a year or two ago. I did not know her mother, nor did I know her. Both were described to me by my visiting neighbors as "reclusive."
Within the past two weeks, one of the neighbors who lived next door to the reclusive neighbor complained to the president of the homeowners' association (HOA) that the yard had been neglected and mail hadn't been picked up and flyers were left unattended at the door. A notice from the Post Office, from December, was an alert to the recipient that no more mail would be delivered until the mail box was emptied and the peron came to call at the Post Office. The notice was dated from December, just before Christmas. The HOA president asked if the neighbors had tried to call or knock on the door to see if anyone was home. "No." Have you called the police, since the neighbor might be ill or hurt? "No."
To make a long story short, the complaining neighbor finally called the police and insisted they take a close look to see whether anyone was there. They found the woman dead in her car, in the garage, along with a suicide note, dated in late November. She had been dead for about seven months.
I know nothing about the dead woman other than what I've been told. I find it heartbreaking that the poor woman was so alone that no one cared enough to try to find her after she went missing in November. I don't know whether she worked, but I'd have to assume not. I don't know whether she knew any of her neighbors, but I have to assume not. She must have been completely and uttlerly alone. No one knew her well enough to even notice that she was not around. It was her yard and her mailbox and the commercial flyers that caught someone's attention, not the woman's absence.
How can we not miss someone's presence, even someone who may have been a recluse? How could her next-door neighbors not notice long ago that something was out of place? I wonder if I had lived next door whether I would have cared enough to try to find out if something was wrong.
I suppose what upset me as much as anything was the fact that the people who told me about this seemed so unmoved by it. The telling was a juicy bit of gossip, not a tale of tragedy. I felt myself physically withdraw from the other four people in the room when the story was told and I saw their reactions; not horror or terror or sadness, but distaste and excitement. That made me feel a little closer to the lady I never met who decided to end her life, perhaps because she was so alone in this world. I don't know what the suicide note said, but I can't help but think that isolation may have played a role in a terrible, irreversible decision.
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