Neighbors...

How many times do we pass our neighbors on the street or at the mailbox and say a passing hello? Do we really have any idea what is going on in their world? Do we care? Are we so focused with our world and issues that we don’t have a moment to ask how someone is doing? We have lived in our house for 19 years and for the most part have the same neighbors as when we moved in. On 74^th Place we only have 16 houses on our little street. It is a quiet street now that most all the kids have grown up or are at least school aged now.

Several years before Heather got sick I would go to a nail place owned by our neighbors across the street from us. I probably went there for a total of 4 years which is about the longest I have ever gone to one place. During Heather’s cancer Susan would give her pedicures for free. It was a family business as her daughter, son and niece all worked there. Most of the time I had Susan or her daughter, Crystal, do my nails and Heather had Amanda, her niece for her toes.

I continued to go to Susan’s for about a year after Heather died. Then one day it just didn’t seem right to go back anymore. I never told Susan that I could not face walking into the nail place anymore, I just stopped going. Of course she was still my neighbor and we would pass on the street and wave but we never spoke to each other.

One day about 2 years ago I noticed a lot of activity over at Susan’s house with many family members there. I even commented to Wendy that something must have happened. Wendy went to school with Crystal and they chatted sometimes when Wendy would go to the nail place with me. I knew their parents were visiting from overseas and I figured one of them must have died.

In the past two weeks I went to my current nail place to get my nails done and I thought I saw Susan there working. I was embarrassed and wondered if I should say anything. I ended up making eye contact with her and she came to say hello. I wondered why she was working there and figured that her nail place must have gone out of business. Susan and I talked nicely and I asked if her daughter Crystal was a medical assistant yet. She got quiet and said, you don’t know? I said no, I had not heard anything. Susan proceeded to tell me that Crissy, her Crystal, had died two years ago from lung cancer at the age of 22.

I was shocked and floored and I had no words. I asked her what happened and told her I was so sorry. Susan had another customer but told me she lost her business because of it and had begun working there about 8 weeks ago. I asked what time she would be home and told her I wanted to come by and talk with her that evening. I went to Hallmark and found a Willow Tree angel and a card, even though it seemed really lame to me after two years. I stopped by that evening to again tell Susan I was sorry and that I didn’t know what had happened.

She began by telling me that Crissy had a bad cough for a long time and had been to the doctor on several occasions. They said allergies and did a chest x-ray that showed nothing. The cough was present for over a year. During a trip to Disneyland at Christmas 2010 Crissy developed a blood clot; by the time she went to the doctor it had moved from her leg to her lungs. Crissy was admitted to Banner Baywood with a blood clot in her lungs and more testing on January 26, 2011. After a few days of IV blood thinners and testing the doctors broke the news that it was stage 4 lung cancer. Crissy never smoked one single cigarette.

It was a glorious day when Susan got to bring Crissy home. The doctors had talked about treatments that would begin in the next few days. Their house is the same model as ours with the two flights of stairs to get to the bedrooms. Crissy would drag her oxygen up and down the stairs as she would slowly try to make her way from her bedroom to the family room. After 3 days she asked her mother to take her back to the hospital because she didn’t feel good. When Crissy was admitted they did more testing and were shocked to see how fast the cancer had spread in just a few days. The doctors decided that treatment was not a possibility and neither was going home. She was moved in ICU at Banner Baywood. Crissy endured a surgery and was placed on a vent before she died on February 24, 2011 just 29 days from when the word cancer entered their world.

I cried, listened and hugged Susan as she told me about her ordeal and what she was going through. I was transported back to those days in ICU with Heather struggling to breathe and being put on the vent and the day she died. I felt horrible that I had not cared enough to come by and say hello to someone that was my neighbor and my friend. This has made me stop to think about my neighborhood and how I should be reaching out to be friendly instead of keeping to myself.

On our little street of just 16 houses we have three grieving mothers. I was the first one; a neighbor at the end had her adult daughter commit suicide and then Crissy. I can understand being in a huge subdivision and having many 100’s of houses where there could be several grieving mothers, but not in a small subdivision like ours with only about 80 houses and on our street of just 16 houses. It just goes to show you that you never really know what your neighbor might be going through. I am a fine one to talk and I do not follow my advice very often but I am trying to reach out to my neighbors more and really show them that I care and am not just the lady that lives in the house with the angel that stays up after Christmas.