Regret

Our downstairs neighbor died last week. A victim of lymphoma, he left behind his wife and 19-year-old son. He was a trim man of medium height, who showed to the world an open, pleasant face and a ready smile. About the only comforting thing to be said about his death is that he died at home without pain. He was, I think, in his early fifties.

He worked in the field of art, but whether he was a dealer, appraiser, curator, artist, or administrator, we've yet to find out. You can see by this uncertainty that we knew him only slightly, the way one knows most neighbors. When you encounter them in your building, you smile and greet them but rarely exchange more than pleasantries.

Once we did do more than that, though. We asked him and his wife for permission to view their remodeled kitchen, hoping to gather ideas for our own renovation. They showed it to us most graciously, explaining some of the finer points of design that we might have overlooked. Otherwise, we saw them only occasionally - in the lobby or elevator, at the annual meetings of our shareholders' association, and once at a party, given by another neighbor, at which they were present.

When I last saw him, as we passed one another in the lobby, he seemed uncharacteristically solemn. I chalked it up to his not working - at the party at which we were both present, I had heard him say that he was "unemployed," and I assumed he had lost his job. But now I understand that his lymphoma, and perhaps the regime of treatments for it, had forced him to stop working.

About two weeks ago, his wife rang our doorbell, asking me if she had lent us a walker - one of those four-legged wheeled contraptions that help people, insecure on their feet, propel themselves along. Last year, after my wife's hip replacement operation, we had borrowed some medical equipment from another neighbor, which included some of the devices he had borrowed from her, but a walker was not among the borrowed items. My wife, however, had obtained one from the hospital, so I gave that one to our downstairs neighbor. Because she was using a cane, I assumed the walker was for her. I should have known better, however, because as she was leaving she told me that at the moment a physiotherapist was with her husband.

Two days later, when I met her in the elevator, I asked her how her husband was. She told me that he was in home hospice care but that he was comfortable. Only then did I understand that the walker was for him and that he was desperately ill. A few days later a neighbor called to tell us that he had died. My wife and I went down right away to give his widow a honey cake that my wife had baked and frozen. On our way we met their son - a strapping young man who had spent the spring semester in China. His mother was sleeping, he said, exhausted after being up all night, administering hourly painkillers to his father. His mother's friend was at home, though, and she could receive us.

Her friend, who had come down from Buffalo, told us that earlier in the day they had gone to a crematorium, where our neighbor's body had been reduced to ashes. They would bury them in a ceremony to which they would invite only a few people, but later they would hold a memorial service. When they had arranged a time and place for the larger gathering, they would surely let us know. They would eat the honey cake for breakfast.

I was surprised by how sad I felt when I heard of our neighbor's death. He was relatively young, in the prime of life really. It would have been so much fairer if the Angel of Death had taken me instead. But of course, fairness has nothing to do with it. Naturally I felt bad for his widow and son, but I particularly identified with the latter, who is the same age I was when I lost my young mother, and I remember the severe grief that followed. But there was also a selfish cause for regretting our neighbor's death. He and his wife were such an attractive couple that I had long wanted to know them better. Perhaps, we thought, we could invite them over for drinks. Like so many things, however, we put it off, and now, of course, it's too late.