Should I be truthful with the neighbors? Or pretend as long as possible, then disappear in the dark of night? It had certainly happened before in our cul-de-sac. At some point you realize the lights are no longer coming on and the grass is getting tall. You may have only shared an occasional hello or a wave from your cars, but you were neighbors. Where did they go all of a sudden, and why didn’t they say good-bye?

Now you know why. It is the same dilemma you are facing now. I decided to be honest. After all, everyone knew me as pretty open and forthright, to go into hiding would have been terribly out of character. However, telling someone you are losing your home ranks right up there with telling them you have cancer or have lost a family member. It is a place they really don’t want to go, and are never sure what to say. There isn’t anything they can do (they think all you must need  is money), and it isn’t clear if they should offer to bring dinner over. This isn’t like when you bring home a newborn. There is no protocol for this! Where is Ann Landers when you need her?

We don’t even know what we need,  just not to burst into tears until we are safely behind our front door again. They go home, you assume, to talk about it behind their closed doors, and you can only surmise what they might be saying. It is the end of life as you knew it, being a ‘normal’ neighbor. Any  tendency to ever whisper about another neighbor will be forever  curbed.  None of us will ever judge another quite so harshly as we might have before.