#83, Paul Anderson.

Our elderly next-door neighbor: a slender, slightly curved, sprightly gent with a balding pate and a face like an inquisitive turtle, though still handsome. Always walking about in the hallway, and always telling us the same jokes. Not one to laugh at his own, you can still tell he takes some pride in them, like the one he always told Nat about how he heard about this great course for me (the woman in the relationship) to take: Nagging 101. Yuk, yuk! But we always countered with the fact that i am so accomplished at nagging, i should be the one teaching the course.

i met Paul when i accidentally left my keys hanging in the front door one afternoon. He removed them, and instead of knocking, took them to his apartment where he wrote me a nice note that he then came back and stuck on my front door. Nat came home and found the note and we went over together to retrieve them. He had lovely cursive handwriting and left his phone number and everything... i kept the note.

Paul left us a few months ago to live at an assisted living facility with his ailing wife Carol. i saw him near the elevator on his last day here, accompanied by his middle-aged daughter (also named Heather!). She was pushing a cart with the last of his things from their apartment. He was so glad to see me, he said, because he'd brought the fan he'd been wanting to give us! His daughter gave me a weary look as he handed it over bashfully; he seemed like a completely different person to me, less animated, and i wondered if he was on some sort of new medication. It was a very bittersweet goodbye. i would have liked very much for him to stay and keep telling us those jokes. But i like to think that he's out there somewhere brightening up someone else's day, every single one.