A Neighbor's Woes

Some time back, I wrote about my next door neighbor who has Alzheimer’s disease. Today, I’ll write about my neighbors on the other side.

A single man a few years younger than me had lived next door for years after inheriting the house from his parents. He was an alcoholic living on disability and mainly kept to himself. I didn’t bother with him much, as I don’t have much patience with drunks. He was a good neighbor in that he didn’t make a lot of noise and he minded his own business.

One night about six months ago, my son woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me our neighbor was dead. As I sat up half-asleep, he told me that EMS was at the house right then and they were taking his body out. It turned out that he’d accidentally overdosed on a combination of booze and prescription medications.

My son told me that this guy had a brother staying with him, who was also an alcoholic on disability and that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to manage living alone. My son’s concern was not misplaced, as the night after the death, another brother came by to check on him. When he couldn’t get him to the door, he asked my son for help. They looked in the windows and saw him passed out on the floor. Not knowing if he’d overdosed as well, they got into the house through the window.

He was all right, other than having passed out from too much drinking. For the next six months, he lived there much as his dead brother had, drinking and keeping to himself. I don’t think I saw him more than once in the entire time.

One day last week, I smelled smoke and thought that someone in the neighborhood had lit their fireplace. Then I heard the sirens of several emergency vehicles getting closer, then saw other neighbors coming out of their houses.

I went outside and found my neighbor’s house on fire, flames and smoke shooting out everywhere. The fire trucks had arrived by this time and were hurrying to fight the blaze. Remembering that this guy had passed out in the house before, I was afraid that he might be in there passed out then. I voiced this concern to a woman standing in my driveway, and she assured me that he was OK. She’d been driving by and saw the flames and smoke, and had called 911 on her cell phone. As she was making the call, she saw him staggering out of the house.

It turned out that the house hadn’t had electricity for months and that he’d been using kerosene heaters to keep warm. The heaters combined with his habitual drunkenness are probably the likely cause of the fire. It was a brick house, so the shell of the home is still intact, but the inside is a shambles. However, he escaped with the most important thing -- his life.