To everything there is a season

There is no smoke coming from the chimney of the little green house across the street this morning.

Last night I knew as the police cars pulled up at sunset that something was direly wrong. And I was right. Our dear old neighbor had passed away.

Tommy was a small man- standing only 5'5". He always wore bib overalls and a plaid shirt. I remember the first time I encountered him. It was at my husband's father's funeral. He stood quietly outside the visiting room- in his best denim overalls and a clean white shirt, clutching a baseball cap in his hands. He refused to come in. He did not speak to anyone. He paid his respects and slipped out before anyone noticed.

Over the past six and a half years we have lived across the street from Tommy- on the top of a hill in my husband's old family home overlooking Tommy's house. Every once and a while I would stop by and say hello if he was outside, but mostly I kept my respectful distance and watched out for him from afar. He lived by himself, had never married, and as of late kept goats in the little mule shed in his backyard.

Tommy was born in the 1920s in the little hollar down the street- before there were streets here. Before this was a neighborhood. A time when this area was still a rural outcropping of the greater city.

But times have changed. This neighborhood has changed. There are houses everywhere. This area is becoming a mecca for urbanites. Houses are being remodeled and updated. New families are moving into the area. New families with new ideas and modern dwellings.

In the midst of this was Tommy. A man who still heated his home by a wood stove. A man who had been educated up to the seventh grade. A man who was never afraid of hard work and always helped his neighbors. And a man who spent his summer afternoons sitting in a folding chair in his front yard waving to neighbors as they drove by. A man of true Southern Appalachia.

I watched quietly from the window as the family stood outside and they brought his body out of the house. I felt foolish and guilty for spying like I did. But I watched. And cried.

I cried a deep sense of loss. I cried not only for the family's loss but for the loss of an era. For Tommy, time had stood still. He was the past. He was what we all once were and what we all seem so desperately trying to leave behind. And today, as I look out over the quiet little green house across the street, I wonder- Will anyone even remember that time?