The End

I found out my neighbor died today. I didn't see it coming. I hadn't seen her outside on the porch in a few weeks, but I related her absence to the weather getting colder. She was too young to go, but she had health problems. We were geographically close. We shared a wall in our duplex. Her husband came this afternoon to tell us that she died this morning. I tried to think of people I could talk to about it, but I was having a hard time figuring that out. This has never happened to me before. (I do recall when my grandmother's neighbor Kitty died. I thought of her mostly because my grandparents gave me Kitty's wooden art supply box full of paints and brushes, and I used that box a lot. I only talked to Kitty a few times.) I wonder about what to do and what to say to my neighbor who just lost his wife. I haven't yet talked to him about it; only heard the news from my daughter who heard it from him.
She had a special name for my cat. We helped each other out. I didn't get to say goodbye. We knew things about each other that no one else knew, like when I stayed at home from work or when she was out of cigarettes.
I wonder if there will come a time when I will be that neighbor. Maybe I'll just slip away peacefully in a forgotten nursing home cell. There, the neighbors'll be kicking off all over the place so it'll be just another event there at the rest home.