It’s Too Late Now

It’s Too Late Now

They said it was suicide, but I knew it wasn’t. Lilly would have never taken her own life. She was too close to God for that. I’ll never forget the day she died. I’ll never forget the paramedics, the sirens, the ambulance and rescue squad truck descending upon her house on that late-summer day.

I remember walking that morning. The leaves were swirling in the crystalline sky, invisibly propelled by an early breath of autumn. I remember the old maple tree in Lilly’s yard already had s few red leaves on it – whether they caught an early breath of an autumn breeze or if they were simply harbingers of the brisk days to come, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. And that’s a good thing.

After my walk, I sat on a broken-down chair on my porch – a chair with rips and tears and stuffing falling out. It is my favorite chair. As long as it supports my weight, I’ll keep it. It’s old like me – but still useful – like me.

The sirens and all the commotion across the street that day disturbed my peaceful world – and the neighborhood. I don’t think any of us knew Lilly. She was just the old lady who lived in the gray house on our street.  The house with the claptrap front porch and crooked stairs. The one with the needy roof and sad eyes that pretended to be windows. The one with the gutters that hung loose at the roofline.

I can remember a dog barking in the distance and an out-of-season breeze blowing a piece of cardboard down the street.

I watched them taking Lilly out of her house on a gurney and sliding her into the back of the red and white ambulance with “Emergency Vehicle’ written backward across the rear doors of the ambulance.

As they pulled out of the driveway onto the street the sirens wailed and a heart stopped beating.   But no matter what the paper said, it wasn’t suicide. I know better.

I sat there on my porch, watching the ambulance disappear down the street, the sirens fading into the distance. A strange sense of calm washed over me. It was as if the world had paused, waiting for something. A piece of me felt oddly apprehensive – as my own mortality came to bear. Lilly, the old lady across, had been a fixture in the neighborhood for as long as I could remember. She was always there, yet rarely even seen since her dog and companion, Scout, died last summer.

She used to take Scout for walks as often as her health would allow. She and her walking, moving slowly down the street, with Scout empathetic and grateful walking beside her. Friend for life.

Lilly had a son and a daughter. As far as I know, the son lived in California, thousands of miles away. The daughter lives in a small town less than a 15-minute drive from here. She used to visit Lilly two or three times a week until she divorced her husband. But ever since she got involved with her new boyfriend – everyone said he beat her – she never once came to visit her mother. I hadn’t seen her visiting Lilly for at least a year.

I don’t think Lily had any visitors since then.

I am no better than her daughter. I never bothered to walk across the street to check on he, ask if she needed anything — or just stop by to say “Hi”.  Before her dog died, Lilly used to tend a small flower garden outside… Scout rolling in the grass enjoying time outside with his best friend.

I’ll remember Lilly, as a frail woman with weathered skin and a gentle smile. She was eighty years old when I last saw her but that was over a year ago. Her arthritic hands, gnarled and twisted, moved slowly as she tended to her small garden. Her once vibrant eyes, dimmed by age and loneliness, held a world of stories untold. She lived alone in that modest gray house, its peeling paint and crooked porch mirroring the lines on her face.

I could have and should have taken five minutes out of my day to check on Lilly or at least go across the street and say hi. Or maybe bring her some tomatoes from my garden… Lord knows in the summertime I always had more than I could eat. But those could’ves, should’ves, and would’ves always come back to haunt you, don’t they?

The other neighbors much younger than Lilly — or me – were too busy with school events, children, work, parties, or whatever younger folks do these days – to take a moment to check on her or take a few moments to walk over and say hi.

It’s too late now.

Lilly didn’t take her own life. I know that for sure.  She loved God too much. She was a good person; she was a kind person. A caring person. We killed Lilly. We – her neighbors – could have assuaged her loneliness and shown her a few moments of friendship or caring once in a while. I didn’t. None of us did.

Her son, in California, was too busy or too far away to visit – and I don’t know but I doubt he called her enough -if he called her at all. Her daughter, marriage destroyed, seemed to be on a course to destroy herself and was always too busy with her own turmoils and troubles to take any time for her mother.

No, Lilly did not commit suicide. I know that for sure. We all could have eased her loneliness but we were too busy with our own problems to worry about Lilly. Lilly didn’t take her own life… she died of loneliness and despair. And I realize now that it’s too late. I realize now that I might have saved her life if had given Lilly just a few minutes of my time and caring.

Oh yes, we’ll all make time now to go to her funeral, we have time for that.

But none of us cared enough to spare her a moment of our time and ease her loneliness when she was alive.

And it’s too late now.