donutszenmom.com

This morning, my neighbor tried to kill himself. I saw cop cars when I went out to the garage, and as I was driving past his house, he was lying on the driveway, surrounded by cops who’d pulled him out of his garage and were waiting for the EMTs.

I don’t really know this man. He’s staying with his elderly mom, who lives two doors down from us. I only know him because he walks her dogs, and I often passed him on the street as I was walking Ty. He was always smoking a cigarette, and as we passed, he’d share a few words before his mom’s dogs would go berserk about Ty’s presence.

“Geez,” he said, turning to them disgustedly as they lunged toward Ty. “What’s with you?! This is such a NICE dog!”

I hadn’t seen much of him and his mom’s angry dogs, because Ty died, and then Waylon was too skittish for much walking.

Last week, though, Waylon and I were tooling around the neighborhood and we passed him. He was smoking and not paying attention. He looked up when his mom’s dogs went ballistic at the sight of Waylon.

“He’s a cute puppy,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. After we passed him, I wondered if he didn’t recognize me, or didn’t register that last time he saw me I had a much larger puppy, and now I have a new, smaller one. He didn’t comment. I wondered if he figured I have two puppies, or if he was being polite not to say anything, or if he just didn’t really notice.

Now, obviously, I assume he was perhaps not paying too much attention to the world outside himself.

Who knows.

I’m sorry he was in that much pain, though, and I hope he’s okay.

I am strangely baffled about the fact that he could have been going about the business of killing himself as I practiced this morning, or as I practiced “sit” and “down” with Waylon in the kitchen. Or as his mom slept in their house. It seems like we should have some kind of telepathy with each other, to be able to hear these things.

And it worries me that we don’t, even though I know that it doesn’t make sense to imagine we would.