The Cruelest of Ironies

I haven't posted about this because, frankly, it's depressing and sad.

I'll start by mentioning that in the early early to mid-1970's, our end of the Brenthaven Drive/Devins Drive/Knox Valley Drive/Wikle Road block was a magical place.  I hadn't turned 10 yet and my sister, Tracy, was 18 months younger than me.  Our part of the subdivision - Brenthaven - was still being built out and there was woods and a creek a two minute walk from the back door of our house at 173 (later 1422) Brenthaven Drive.

It was an idyllic time of my life and, probably, all of our lives.  Summer days that seemed to last forever and summer evenings with neighborhood cookouts.  The adults sitting on someone's patio, probably drinking beer or a cocktail, and the children playing kick the can in our backyard or chasing fireflies.  It was quite literally one big happy neighborhood family.

What really made our end of the block so special was the people.  Behind our house were the Danchertsen's (Chuck and Betty, with Kim and John about our age).  Diagonally behind our house were the Gilley's (Warren, Sandra, Terri and my best friend growing up, Warren Lee); and next door to us were the Pilkington's (Evelyn and Bill).  Across the street were the Allen's (David, Carol Ann, Timmy and Heather).

Evelyn and Bill Pilkington were older and had never had children.  Consequently, they took an active interest in the lives of all of the children on the block.  They often babysat for Tim and Heather Allen.  We called them "Mommy Evelyn" and "Daddy Bill."  They were two of the nicest people I have ever known.

As time marched inexorably one in the way that it does, things inevitably changed.  The Danchertsen's moved away but stayed in touch.  The Allen's moved away and didn't stay in touch.  The fabric of the Gilley's family unit disintegrated as Terri developed severe emotional and mental problems and Warren Lee fell into a pattern of drug and alcohol abuse that ruined his life.  Sandra Gilley died from cancer.  Warren Gilley, who was a second father to me, died after a long and arduous battle with congestive heart failure.

Evelyn and Bill Pilkinton, and my mom, were the mainstays on the block.  As time passed, they were the last remaining members of the that special group of people from that innocent time in the early and mid-1970's when all of us, grownups and children alike, were young and relatively unscathed by the hardest parts of life.  Many, probably most, spring and summer afternoons after she retired, when Evelyn and Bill were in town - they wintered in Florida - my mom walked over to their patio and had a glass of wine with them.

In fact, the day I told my mom that Jude and I were pregnant with J.P., she and I were sitting at the patio table with Evelyn and Bill on a glorious spring evening.  I had forgotten that until just now.  When she realized what I was trying to tell her, my mom got flustered, then teary eyed, as Evelyn and Bill smiled and laughed.  We all hugged each other and my mom and I drove down to Tracy's church and interrupted her choir practice to tell her the news.

Now, more than a decade later, I found myself visiting my mom on a Saturday morning.  Afterwards, I walked down the hall, knocked cautiously on a door, and walked into Evelyn and Bill's room.  Bill looked emaciated as he lay in bed and smiled at me.  Evelyn got up from her cot when she saw me.  She immediately starting crying, walked toward me and fell into my arms.

"Oh, Phil, Bill's never going to be able to leave here," she said, between tears.  I held her as Bill watched bemusedly.  It was the kind of moment that momentarily takes your breath away, fraught with emotions so heavy they crush your spirit if you let them.  I hadn't seen them in a while and Tracy had prepared me that Bill didn't look good but it was still hard, very hard, to see him in such a weakened state.  And to see Evelyn so out of sorts and upset.

In later visits, Evelyn has been better.  More herself, almost cheerful.  Still, the rawness and nakedness of my first visit with them has been hard for me to shake.

So, in the cruelest of ironies, my mom and her longtime next door neighbors and close friends, Evelyn and Bill Pilkinton, are still neighbors of a sort.  This time, however, they're neighbors in an assisted living facility, one that they will probably never leave.  And my mom doesn't really know who Evelyn and Bill are, to top things off.

As my sister, Tracy, said so aptly in a text last week, "never in my wildest dreams would I have pictured it this way."

Me neither.