2674 New Day.

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The nice neighbor lady I’ve spoken about in the blog before passed away a few hours before I posted this page. I wasn’t close with her, but she was a good neighbor and I looked after her dog until she finally became our dog, I guess officially forever, tonight. I don’t know why exactly, but it made me very sad even though I barely interacted with her in the nearly 20 years I knew her. Like, I somehow feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be sad, but I am. She was a fixture in the background of my life for a long time. Her husband was still alive when I moved here. I remember her little dog getting run over and just various things. We took in Precious when she couldn’t take care of her by herself anymore. She’s pretty acclimated to us now. I dunno. I can’t dent that it makes me a lot more unhappy than I feel like I have a right to. It would be really unfortunate is a bad neighbor moved into her house. We’ve had a nice long run of having good neighbors and the value of a good neighbor should never be discounted.

Anyway, I hope you return to me on Friday. Have a a good time in the interim.

16 Comments

Well I would say you absolutely have a right,though. Even if they were never family or friends, there are clearly shared memories. Grief away, buddy, you have all the right

I feel for you, Jackie. It’s completely understandable to be sad in a situation like this. Even if you and the nice neighbor weren’t particularly close, she was part of your community and life in her own way, including the bond created by sharing custody of the dog that your family has now inherited. It’s always sad to see some of that go. Don’t deny yourself your grief. Let it happen, aloow yourself to feel what you gotta feel and you’ll be honoring her place in your life. Wishing all the best to you and yours.

Honestly, that’s how it should be. It’s sad that we’re so atomized that we DON’T feel grief when a member of our community dies unless they were our personal friend or relative. Growing up, a kid in our school died, and even though I barely knew him, it was a really big deal to us all. Even those we weren’t close to were part of our lives. Now, in a whole different state, heck, I wouldn’t be able to pick a single one of my neighbors out of a lineup, nor they me I bet. Communities barely exist in many places. I’ve actually considered moving away just to try and find one to be part of–I’d like to be somewhere that, if I died, folks would care, at least for a little while, instead of just realizing 3 months later that they hadn’t seen my car lately.

I think part of it is that with the advent of superior entertainment, greater access to fueling our interests, and being connected to the world at large via the internet, location is no longer the primary feature a community is built around. It used to be that your neighbors would be your community because they were there and everybody needs some amount of community for the sake of their own mental health, so by virtue of not having other options, bonds of community would form with whomever was close by and not outright objectionable. Now communities are forming around topics of interest, pieces of media, forms of entertainment, subjects of study, etc. Personally, I much prefer having a community tailored to my interests and personality, as the connections and bonds I’ve formed feel much more genuine than any community formed of the convenience of a nearby location ever could be for me.

I’m a weirdo, if I was dependent on the acceptance of my neighbors to have a community, I don’t think I’d ever get to feel like I was a part of one. Now, I have communities of fellow weirdos that share my weird interests and enjoy my weird personality. Sure, a lot of that is online, but I have a solid group of friends I’ve managed to make in person that share my interests that I see fairly regularly, too. Communities today look very different than they did even 100 years ago, but I feel like they are likely stronger in many ways than they tended to be back then. If I don’t have anything in common with my neighbor, or if my neighbor is a jerk, I can just not bother interacting with them and instead focus my time and energy engaging with people I actually like spending time with.

I understand where you’re coming from. But at the same time, and I hope this doesn’t come across as rude, I think that is ultimately shallow. In a community, people have shared concerns, fears, values, and outlooks. Not absolute conformity, but these are people who share backgrounds and jobs and affected by the same economic and legal changes, more or less. These are the people your children will/did grow up with. I just don’t think there’s a true comparison to your Discord friends you play a game with, or a fan forum for whatever. That’s great and all, but those people could, without realizing it, be your most dire enemy because of their whack ideology, or some sicko who is just hanging around looking for minors to groom. I certainly had my friends as a kid, the specific people I prefered to spend time with due to shared interests, but I still liked and respected alot of other kids and adults in my neighborhood. Now, sure, I have some online people I talk to, but I barely know anything abou them, and if I vanished tomorrow, they’d be no more than mildly curious.

I dunno, maybe I’m just too old despite totally being an internet denizen myself, but if a natural disaster struck, my internet friends would be worthless, while the people I live with would be forced to work together, and I wish I knew those people.

I’m sorry for your loss. It’s not the quantity of time spent that matters so much as the quality of the time. Given that all of your interactions have been positive ones in their own way, you have every right to be as upset about it as you are.

You continue to take care, Jackie.

What is this new setting for the comic??? I kid.
So many of these 70+ year olds, cigarettes are good for you message on TV, and that chemical bath you rinse the parts in is perfectly safe, or at least that’s probably what my ex-MIL, who just passed away, was probably told at some point.

You’ve got a right to feel ways about whatever you like. That’s just how it works. I still have strong feelings about television shows that have been canceled for a decade.

And we’re back in the store! How novel! :D

So what is this new look for Carol’s hair, with the brunette tips? From my experience, this happens when someone dyes their hair, then it grows out and they don’t refresh the dye.

All of this would imply that at some point, Carol appeared as a brunette. How did we miss that?

Although, I for one like her much more as a redhead.

Her hair has always been this way, I just rendered the darker parts as black because it’s much easier than making it a dark brown that has to be filled in after. I’m much faster than I used to be after years of working through relentless interruptions so I just started drawing details I usually pass over. You can see she has freckles as well, which I rarely add.

Something I’ve been learning that I wanted to pass off to you(perhaps you already know In which case, consider this a reminder). Emotions are never wrong. The conclusions we may come to while feeling an emotion can be wrong, but feeling the emotion itself is never wrong. It’s a feeling. Pain over loss is never wrong, even if you think it’s not justified. Pain is pain. I lost my best friend(who happened to be my Mom/only parent I have connection with) very recently and I’ve learned that one of the aspects of grief is losing roles that people were to us.

You may not have interacted with your neighbor much, but as you said she was a good neighbor. And as you also said it would be unfortunate to get a bad neighbor In her place. That is legitimate loss. Obviously the few interactions you did have left an impression on you, I mean you took over responsibility of her dog for goodness sake!

I’m realizing that my inner critic is a real bastard and probably my biggest enemy. From one persons struggle to another, cut yourself a break sometimes hey?

I’m sorry for your loss Jackie. That lady sounded like a friend, even if you didn’t talk much you still helped one another.

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