Our neighbor across the street from us died last week. We knew it was going to happen it was just a matter of time. Not because he was old but because he was drinking himself to death. He would leave early in the morning, (at first we thought he was going to work but later we found out that he lost his job) and come back in the afternoon so drunk that sometimes he would not be able to make it to his front door. He would pass out in the truck or the front porch. We didn’t know him very well, mostly because he was always drunk and we would end up having the same conversation with him over and over again- after awhile we just avoided him. He had family, and a wife who had left him a few years ago. After she left, our next-door neighbors said they tried to help him, took him to AA meetings and church, but he wasn’t really interested. They eventually gave up.
I learned from his obituary that he grew up in Colorado Springs and graduated from Palmer High School. He previously had a dog that he loved to take to the mountains and they would climb fourteeners. He also spent time chasing storms on the plains with a friend. I had no idea he had any of these interests, because the only thing we ever saw him do was drink.
How does that happen? How do you end up the way he did? How does nothing else matter? The whole thing makes me so sad. Sad that he died this way. Sad that no one could help him. Sad that we didn't really know a man who we've lived across from for 9 years. Sadder still, I think the picture in his obituary is the only time I have ever seen him smile.
86, 54.
Poor guy. - m.e.
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