Letters to loneliness

There’s an abandoned house next door to mine. It used to be a beautiful house, and maybe it still could be, but it’s been empty for four or five years now – maybe six.   The windows are boarded up, the yard is full of weeds two and three and four feet high, and the ramshackle shed out back looks like you could knock it over with one hard shove.  The fence that separates the two properties is a rusty sagging chain link fence with ugly sheets of tin blocking the view. 

George and Nina, a brother and sister, used to live there - Nina on the top floor, and George on the bottom - until they were forcibly removed by the city, (and by “forcibly” I mean that they picked them up and carried them out of the house and into a van) and the house declared unfit to live in.  I wasn’t there – I never even met them - but I’ve heard the story from my neighbors.  Nina died a year and a half ago at 84.  Bone cancer.  George is 93 or maybe 94, and in assisted living.