My neighbor, Floyd, killed himself sometime last week. Nobody in the neighborhood knows exactly when it happened but everybody has a pretty good idea of why.
I guess that after two or three days of not responding to the knocks on the door from those kind hearted souls representing Meals on Wheels and quite possibly from the stench that was emanating from inside his house, one of them dialed 911 and sure enough, Ol” Floyd had done himself in . A bullet to the head did the trick.
Floyd was a cranky old bastard. He was a veteran of World War II with some shrapnel in his leg and the story to go with it and a fatalistic view of the world that seemed to go on without him. Whenever we managed to speak, it’d always turn back to that subject.
His family deserted him a long time ago. Whatever kids he managed to have had long since passed on the duties of tending to him to their own children years ago. At best, the grandkids came by about once a month. I'm sure they had their own lives and details to attend to. From the looks of it, Floyd was a prisoner of his own home. Too stubborn, too proud or, perhaps too poor to go into a nursing home and receive full time care, Floyd decided to ride out the storm on his own terms. Oh, some local member(s) of the VFW might drop by once a week or so and chat for an hour or two and if Floyd was lucky, he might be able to squeeze a dinner out of them out on the town but for the most part, Floyd relied on the glow of the television set and the daily routine of the postman for company.
A while back, we had a pretty decent ice storm here in Columbus, Ohio. Everything pretty much came to a grinding halt as the city tried to recover and Floyd was no different. It was one of those “Level Three” snow emergencies where traffic was banned from the roads and one had to rely on either their feet or their wits to get whatever essentials they might need until the roads were cleared. During that time, me and Anna took him over a couple warms plates of food, chatted for awhile and exchanged phone numbers with him with the understanding that he’d call us if he needed anything. I’ve always felt that when faced with adversity, people have a tendency to rise to the occasion. Hopefully, it’s the lesson that was imparted to the not so anymore wee one and that it sticks.
The ice soon melted and life as we know it returned to whatever qualifies as normal. The phone never rang.
The moving van recently finished toting all of Floyd’s worldly possessions off to destinations unknown. His obituary was brief and really didn’t say much at all. There was no mention of a funeral service or a memorial. Ol’ Floyd probably figured nobody would have shown up anyway.
After some repairs are done to the house, I’m guessing it won’t be long before a “For Sale” sign is spotted in the front yard. By today’s standards, it’s not much of house. He’d lived there for at least forty years or so and if the local gossip is correct, the last thirty was mostly on his own. Today what we would take for granted in looking at a home, he would consider a luxury. There’s no central air conditioning or dish washer, no automatic garage door opener or self cleaning ovens, no cable television or high speed internet service. Much like Floyd himself, the wiring is shot and plumbing has probably gone straight to the dogs.
I’m sure that over the next few month’s some younger couples will drop by and snub their nose at the thought of moving in. Maybe one or two them might take on the task of making it into one of those things that real estate agents like to refer to as a “fixer upper” and every last vestige of Floyd will be gone.
Although we were pretty much strangers, I'd like to think we were so in a neighborly way. We both pretty much keep to ourselves and unless crisis threatens, prefer to live our own lives in our own way.
Still, I wish he would’ve picked up the phone.
Better yet, I wish I would have.