Neighbors

For the most part I do not know my neighbors.  On one side of my house I have the Taxi Cab family and on the other side I have the transient residence for folks moving to America from overseas.  Across the street I have the lady that doesn't like my leaf blower - but she spends time outside growing things.  Scattered throughout the neighborhood I know three families that have lived in this neighborhood, like me, since it was built in 1983.  For the most part the neighbors on either side seemed to have been antagonist to my wife's existence.  I can't count the number of times she would remark about them not mowing, not spraying for weeds,  having too many people in their homes, parking the wrong way and so on.   I never interacted with the neighbors and really thought that they disliked my wife just based on the number of times I saw my wife yell at their kids for riding the bikes on our grass, or throwing a ball in the yard. 

About a month ago the transient residents stopped my sister-in-law and asked about Mary.  Pat explained that Mary had died.  She said the neighbors offered their condolences and even offered to come over an cook a meal for me if I really needed it.

Yesterday the taxi cab family wife waved me over to her as I was returning home from a class.  She asked if everything was OK because she had not seen my wife in a long time.  I explained to her that my wife had died last September.  She seemed honestly concerned and expressed her condolences.  Her English is a bit rough but we stood and talked for a bit and she showed me where her pacemaker had been installed. 

Who knew?  I was flabbergasted to think that these ladies ever talked to my wife and had a civil conversation, but evidently there was more to my wife's daily existence then yelling at neighborhood kids.  Mary didn't communicate the simple things in her life to me.  She conveyed the extremes.  The really, really good things like CCD and NASCAR, and the really, really bad things like neighbor kids, bad drivers and people who don't know how to do their own taxes (I guess I was an exception on the last one.). 

Things need to be different.  I can't go back an right my perceived wrongs of the past.  I can work to make it different in the future.