Neighbors

I live in an urban neighborhood. It is not walled by high-rises. It is an old neighborhood of wood houses built in the 19th century on a commercial 18th-19th-century pear orchard. I can see Boston's Back Bay from my bedroom window. The juxtaposition is jarring sometimes. My street often has the feel of a small town miles away from a modern city center.

 

A woman on our street appears to have mental and emotional challenges. She is middle aged and lives with her extended family. Every weekday morning she waits on the sidewalk in front of her home for a shuttle which apparently takes her to a day care program. She apparently loves pink. Pink baseball cap or pink knit hat. Pink knapsack. Pink sneakers.

 

This morning I heard a loud wailing as I cooked my oatmeal. One of our elderly cats, a deaf black cat, wails a lot. This was different. I walked to the bay window. There was our neighbor in pink. Her van was late. Her extended family had gone off somewhere. Their cars were missing from the neat driveway next to their house. Our lover of pink was not happy. She was chanting loudly in the direction from which her van usually has come by then. She moderated her wailing from time to time by talking into her imaginary cell phone, an effective technique some wise caregiver must have suggested to her. The van came eventually. I was relieved from my window vigil.

 

Our two cats are very old. The deaf black one wails with trills whenever Peter leaves her alone too long. She sounds like a hoarse and weary old soprano. The white one has an endocrine disorder and senile dementia. She wails plaintively about an hour before each of her two meal times. Their wailing is not particularly focused. They wail, like our neighbor, to the Universe about their uncomfortable situation.

 

My pink lady and our cats are neighbors. We are all comrades in our experiences of the realities of life with advancing age and the difficulties it presents. Like the pink lady's extended family, we are committed to caring for our little elders. This melts away so many superficial details. Human constructs are drowned out by the pain in the wailing of the wailers. All that remains in my mind is being watchful and how to ease their suffering if I can.

 

Gaining this perspective is hard. It is also greatly reassuring. We will all rely on neighbors, family, friends and strangers along our way. If I can recognize my commonality with creatures big and small when there is an existential need, then I know that this human compassion may well be there for me when I need it. In these times when the political dialogue in the U.S. is often dominated by those who preach antisocial independence, based solely on money, I am grateful for my pink-loving neighbor's reminder this morning that it is simply human to respond to wailing without regard for what may be gotten from that response or what it may cost.