We found out last week that Mrs C had passed away. Until about 18 months ago she had lived in the house on the corner.

She had lived there longer than anybody knew. Her only family was a daughter in another city. We had never seen her but we got the idea that there wasn’t a lot of affection left between them. None of us really thought Mrs C should be living there by herself but there was no way we could convince her of that.

Shopping was one of her main activities. Her house was packed with stuff in boxes, some of it never used. There was even stuff still in shopping bags with the sales slips still in the bag too.

She paid close attention to what was happening on her end of the block. She always knew when there was a strange car or person at a house. When Tricia’s dad came to visit us she dropped by to welcome him with a bouquet of magnolias from the tree in her front yard.

She must have been starved for attention. Ocasionally she would knock on our door to ask for help with her phone and Tricia would go back with her to see what was the matter. Most of the time it would turn out that the line had been disconnected from the wall.

We were used to seeing the truck from the key store in her driveway. I can’t explain how she could have locked herself out so often, even after they fixed the door so that it was impossible to lock the door without a key. And police cars too. She was convinced that someone was getting into her house and stealing things. All of the windows had bars on them and she had an alarm and even a video camera setup, but somehow they got past all that. The policemen never lost their patience. In spite of all the calls they kept showing up to investigate each time.

So it was kind of a relief when she fell and broke her hip and had to be hospitalized. We knew she was getting some care at last. The doctors refused to release her back to live alone and she went into a nursing home right across the street from the mall where she had spent so much of her time.