cont. Just another day, but better.

The firetrucks on Tuesday night, election night,  (see previous entry) were because someone was found dead in his room. No idea why so many and what the yelling was about---we don't communicate much among ourselves nowadays, what with the Covid and all---but it was just another ordinary death. 

The lady who told me, as we passed on the way to our cars, said, "they're dropping like fleas"  and, with a nod of her head to a car parked in the number one handicap spot, "wonder what they're gonna do about his car. All his relatives live in North Carolina."  

This nodded to spot is where she always parked her van in before Charlie (dead guy) arrived and took her imagined-by-dint-of-seniority-given right to the spot. Charlie, in his  innocent (I think) ignorance  of his crime, beat her to the spot one day and kept on beating her to it.

 So, in reference to Nard's post about distance and mourning, here is another example of relative closeness to the departed in reference to feeling. Nobody around here takes much notice when another of us croaks. It is to be expected.  That is pretty much everyone's fully anticipated exit when they check in here. The lady who told me about Charlie, for instance, moved in here 18 years ago, with her husband, who died a couple of years ago, after which she moved to the apartment below me on the first floor to await her turn.

 Snatching it from under my nose, I might add, complaining to top  management,--after I had paid a deposit,--that she had asked years ago for it. So they apologized to me, refunded my deposit,  and gave it to her. The squeaky wheel, and all a that. Seniority possibly? Full disclosure: Every time I saw Charlie's car parked in her spot, I gloated. 

Charlie was a short, scraggly haired man with  grey uncut facial and neck and ear and nose hair who wore flannel pajama bottoms  and slip-in old man slippers on bare feet everywhere he went. He drove and went out several times a day and seemed spry, if unkempt. One avoided riding the elevator with him because he stank, but he was pleasant and said hello. He was a Navy veteran and had crosses and rosaries hanging in his car. RIP Charlie. Wonder if he had voted.

Brain tired. More about the 'but better' part of my life later.