Not my BFF Myra, but the man who lived in the 'mother-in-law' house behind her.

I had noticed the dual squads parked outside as I pulled in to my house. My wife met me at the garage. "Unsere nachbar ist tot."

We speak pidgin German when we want to keep secrets from the kids and my daughter was there.

It wasn't a surprise - one of the first things my neighbor had told me during one of our infrequent conversations was that he had prostate cancer and didn't expect to live much longer. He had an imperfection between his front teeth that looked like nothing but the mutation caused by many years of sucking Marlboro smoke through them.

So he's dead. I wonder how things work now. I hear he has a daughter. I suppose she'll be or has been notified and will come by to clean up her father's house - a task I don't envy. He was living in his house when I first moved here eight years ago and was always bringing stuff he found home (there are still a couple of wheelchairs and an immobile lawnmower in his front yard that I can't remember ever NOT being there). Will there be a memorial service? Will we be invited? I didn't know him very well, but there's a weird empty feeling I have when I see pass by his now-empty house as I walk to my garage and nobody deserves to meet their ultimate and inevitable end alone.