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Wed Feb 16 04:38:25 AM EST 2022
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It was a cast of hillbilly and redneck extras straight out
of "Next of Kin," hoopin' and hollerin', making a hell of a
racket just outside my window. They were hurling hefty
garbage bags into high-walled trailers attached to grandiose
pick-up trucks. Some fool jumped up and down on top of the
pile, trying to compress it, occasionally falling in while
some other buffoons cackled. A loud, half-assed banging on a
piano came through the walls, sounds barely rising above the
bouncing of a box fan on the street, dragged by its power
cord leash passed another doing wheelies in a wheelchair and
others dragged other trophies across my front yard to
another truck..

And a viscerally sickening feeling washed over me.

The home of the elderly couple had long ago began falling
into disrepair. Their son, a good-natured veteran and a
drunk, lived with them, as did his special needs son. The
son did his best to help his parents; the grandmother
home-schooled his kid. They were as isolated, private, and
alone on the block as the rest of us.

In time, the grandfather became unaware, spending time in
assisted living, and the grandmother became incapacitated.
The son unexpectedly dropped dead one night; his son fetched
groceries for his grandmother and accompanied her via car
service or frequently by ambulance to her destinations. The
dead son's car was eventually tagged and towed away for
sitting on the street too long. In time, the grandmother's
state became untenable and children's services stepped in to
place the boy. Then the rest unraveled as well with
foreclosure, the contents of their lives abandoned.

The tail end happened during the first wave of COVID, and
the house sat quietly for an eternity. Only recently, with
the disease-inspired real estate craze, has activity picked
up next door. Today, the clown-car equivalent showed up to
empty the house of all its contents. Three or four trips to
the dump later, the street was quiet again.

I sat in the world in between. I knew the family next door.
I knew them as human beings. I knew what the house meant to
them. I knew what the different items inside meant to them. And
I saw the nose-picking baboons bouncing them down the
driveway and across my yard, sifting through the spoils.

And I saw that those things, in the end, were just things,
and that that, inevitably, is the fate of us all. It takes
the greedy assholes to cast their home as an asset, the
troop of hyenas to see a life's accumulation as trash with
hopefully a valuable find, and whatever other people with
their own roles in the world and accompanying different
views, to continue the cycle of life in the cul-de-sac.

Waking from an early sleep, I remembered to take the trash
down to the curb. When I wake again, it'll be gone.