Touching Neighbors

Close Neighbors in North Bend, OR
photo by Kat 2010

Nothing is impossible,

the word itself says ‘I’m possible’

~Audrey Hepburn

Last week I posted the story about a woman in Worcester, Massachusetts dead in her home for four years before found. When I first read the story in our Sunday School lesson, I remembered what happened in Omaha. The local news story touched my heart—enough to write a story for In Touch Magazine.  

In October 2006 Omaha World Herald ran a story titled, “Alone Far Too Long In Omaha.” A woman had died in her upscale home on 90^th street in west Omaha.

No one had seen the 59 year-old-woman since May the year before. In July 2006, a neighbor complained about the care at vacant house, a nice ranch home with several trees and shrubs to shield it from the busy street.

The city sent a letter. In October, when they had received no response, they sent an inspector to visit the home. He found the body. An autopsy determined she’d died sometime after she left a hospital in March 2005, eighteen months earlier, well before a city housing inspector found her.

The news story said she had been living without heat and lights. I remember cutting out the story and thinking, What happened to her mail? What about family? Why didn’t the neighbors notice sooner? What about me? I drove past the woman’s house every weekday on my way to work. Often I prayed on the way to work, but I never once gave thought to the homes I drove by.

I’m trying to change the way I look and act in my neighborhood.

Still Lionhearted, Kat