My Next-Door Neighbor Died Last Night…

So last night the missus and I were sitting in bed playing Point (a card game similar to Briscola) when we suddenly heard the “beep-beep-beep” of a “reverse gear alarm”… you know, the kind usually found on big trucks. Since we weren’t expecting a construction crew in front of our building at 11PM, we got up and looked out the window… only to see two ambulances, a North Carolina state trooper and several civilian cars with emergency lights on their dashboards.

Apparently the old man next door had died. Members of his family soon showed up, one of them in almost uncontrollable tears. Eventually a small white minivan pulled up. I’m assuming that it was the medical examiner, since the guy driving the van got out, pulled a gurney from the back of the van, and then put an empty body bag on the gurney and wheeled it in the neighbor’s townhouse. Eventually he came back out with the body and put it in the back of his van.

So after this happened last night, I was itching to write a post about it. Originally, it was going to be something along the lines of “ding-dong the witch is dead” from The Wizard of Oz. I say that because back when the Old Man first moved in, he and I went around and around about my “noise”. If, after 11:00PM, I decided to watch a sedate BBC documentary about birds – much less anything with explosions or car chases – you could always count on the Old Man to bang on the wall, or come over the next day to complain. One time he even came over and challenged me to a fist fight over my so-called noise (even though he couldn’t specify what noise or when it happened). That instance was so bad that I wrote a letter to the HOA. Apparently the letter set off a chain of reactions that led to him getting his medications changed; after that he ceased giving us so much trouble.

So instead of saying something crass, or something that I don’t really mean, allow me to just say requiescat in pacem, Old Man. I hope you’ve found peace, wherever you are.