Alice

Our neighbor of 45 years—and Jasper’s beloved babysitter—died today.

Gary and I watched with horror from our kitchen window. The distraught father shouting on his cell phone and clutching his baby outside—he must have discovered her body by looking in her front window when she didn’t answer the door to customarily care for his child on Monday—the ambulance that arrived and the attendants who rushed into the home but then twenty minutes later, still no one came out—and I kept telling Gary, “maybe she’s okay, maybe they’re staying inside because they’re giving her oxygen..”

But then the police car pulled up.

And an officer went into the house and didn’t come out for another half hour.

“She must have passed sometime over the weekend,” we overheard the policeman say. 

“She was 75,” he said to another neighbor.

Funny, 75 doesn’t sound that old anymore.

Anyway, hug the people you love. Today was a cruel reminder how everything can change in an instant.