Sad news

 We moved into our house in 1999. It's on a court, or a cul-de-sac if you want to raise the resale price. There is not a whole lot of re-selling, though. Of the 13 houses, 10 are still owned and occupied by originals who moved in when the places were built in 1999 and 2000.

That's going to change, though. A woman who lived at the very top of the hill is gone.

It's funny. We had lived on the same court and talked a million times as she walked her dog, but it wasn't until about ten years ago that a conversation led us to realize that she lived up the road from me when we were teenagers. She was two years younger, and you know, two years in high school might as well be an eternity. So we were teenaged nodding acquaintances, and then we wound up living on the same court.

"C" had a job in the financial sector, and was very successful at it. She stayed home after the Crash of 2008, still active and befriended in the neighborhood, until the last two years when she fell ill with leukemia.

She was a single woman, so being in and out of the hospital meant she needed help with the dog and taking care of things around the home. She got that, all she needed, and she fought the in-and-out of the hospital battle valiantly for all this time.

But we could tell in the past few months that the sand was piling up in the bottom of the hourglass. She didn't have her customary zip, but she still walked the pooch four or five times a day, and exchanged a friendly word every time. I always figured she enjoyed the walks as much as the dog did!

But a couple of weeks ago she knocked on our door, and with the same accepting way she might have used if she were saying that she needed a new water heater, she told us that the doctors had told her that there was no more they could do, and sent her home with hospice to live out her time - three weeks, they said.

And as we talked that night on our porch, I was so struck by her brave forbearance. Not a single note of bemoaning her fate passed from her.  She was going door to door as she could find us all, to say goodbye individually.

The end came this Monday, and her brother and his family were here from St Louis to arrange her journey. Because of the damn Covid, they are asking that only family attend the funeral this weekend, and then I guess they'll put the house up for sale, and another family will make that house their own, and I imagine we will all enjoy knowing them.

If you know me, you know I am the guy who still laughs at silly jokes and pranks. My youthful demeanor is not a front. I am not much older at heart than the skinny kid who rode the bus with "C" to Towsontown Jr High and Towson High. (I did not ride the bus home all that often, being a regular on the detention squad.) But the mature side of me recognizes the dignity and nobility it took to face life and death with strength and not one word of complaint.

The new neighbors will have a magnificent trail to follow.