The unrelenting passage of time
Wednesday night I had a massive pain flareup towards the end of choir practice, due to some stressy situations that were developing all at once on top of my continued lack of sleep due to working on Transitions. This had me basically incapable of doing anything for several days, and I spent the next few days mostly just lying on the couch and smoking weed.
Yesterday as I was coming out of that haze I learned from my next-door neighbor Joe that my back-yard neighbor Rick died, also on Wednesday night.
Rick was a good person, with a lot of health issues that snuck up on him pretty quickly. Over the last year or so his health was clearly going downhill fast, and a few months ago he’d had a heart attack, followed up with heart surgery, and then had gone back to the hospital several times. As I learned from his roommate/caretaker, he’d had a stroke a few weeks ago, followed up by an aneurysm last week. This was on top of a bunch of other health things, including diabetes, which I didn’t know about.
He was always helpful and friendly, and loved to talk peoples' ears off at great length. Also, when I first moved to White Center, I was warned about how Rick as “a bit old-fashioned” and might be “difficult” regarding my gender, and yet, guess who’s the only person in my neighborhood who’s never misgendered me! (At least, not so far as I know, and certainly never to my face.)
Rick actually grew up in my house, and had so many stories about its construction and so on. Some of the sketchier things about its construction were either his or his dad’s doing. So he’ll have a lasting impact on my living situation for a while, all the same.
Rick was 70 when he died. When I first met him 3 years ago I’d have believed he was 70. As of a month ago I would have thought he was 90.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen to Rick’s house. The main building is a manufactured home that’s in, frankly, not very good condition, and probably just needs to be torn down. There’s also a large garage/workshop building that I’ve never been inside but which looks pretty useful and functional. Rick has a son who I guess is inheriting everything (and who has already evicted the roommate, who’s going back to nomadic trailer living next month). I haven’t met the son but I’ve heard Things that make me hope he’s just going to sell the property rather than taking it over. I’ll need to keep an eye out on that front.
But anyway. Yeah. Life keeps on going on until it doesn’t. I hope when my time comes (which will hopefully not be for a while) people have nice things to say about me too. Even though I won’t be around to hear them.