My Heart Hurts

I got a call today. From my apartment complex management office. They called to tell me my neighbor died.

Not too long ago I contacted them to do a wellness check on him. It’s sort of a long story, but there were certain clues that he might not be … well. And I’d tried knocking on his door. No response. One of the apartment complex folks came, and my neighbor was well enough.

My neighbor and I talked a day or so after that. He’d hurt his back. He asked me to take his cell phone payment to the place. He gave me a slip of paper with his account information and the money, and I gladly did so.

I think I talked with him a few days after that.

Or maybe it was the same time meeting where I delivered his cell phone payment. I can’t remember. In the day-to-day those details don’t seem so important…

He said he had a doctor’s appointment a few days later for his back.

Tropical Storm Eta came along the way. I was sort of keeping an eye on his apartment. Watching to make sure he was turning on his lights at night. I didn’t want to bother him. Or insult him by checking in too much.

Last Friday, a friend of my neighbor’s stopped by. My neighbor didn’t respond, and he knocked on my door. He said he’d been trying to call my neighbor. And he normally brought food by for him. But my neighbor hadn’t been responding. I admitted I hadn’t heard from my neighbor in a bit, and I assured his friend I’d put in another wellness check request with the apartment complex.

I’m not sure if they came over the weekend or not. But on Monday, I woke up and did my morning practice down at the Pier. Early. Sunrise-ish. When I returned I heard the beeping of what I thought was the fire alarm system in my apartment complex. It has beeped incessantly before. I put in a work order to check it out.

Turns out it was my neighbor’s smoke alarm beeping. The battery must have been going out. The maintenance folks left a “Sorry I missed you sign” hanging on the door knob after they fixed the problem.

Yesterday an apartment complex person knocked on his door. The weather’s been nice, so my window was open. I heard him say, “I heard him talk about Tennessee last time I was here.”

Today, I get the call. Maybe around 10:00. And then I realize those folks on my breezeway aren’t maintenance workers. They are Fire/EMS folks. My neighbor? Dead. For way longer than a minute.

And my heart hurts so much. It hurts because I wasn’t more persistent with someone checking on him. It hurts because the maintenance folks didn’t look in the rest of the apartment on Monday. IT’S THURSDAY!!! IIt hurts because I wish we’d exchange cell phone numbers in case he needed help. It hurts because he was in his apartment for close to a week and a half. (!!!) It hurts for reasons more gruesome that I overheard through my open window.

And, admittedly, it hurts because I live alone and I fear that I’ll die the same way. With no one really noticing for a week-and-a-half. And it breaks my fucking heart that’s how he died.