After he visited I emailed a list I’m on and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to visit the neighbor. There were a couple takers. On Wednesday he came back. Twice. I couldn’t visit again. I felt trapped in my house. Like I’d need to start tiptoeing through the hall if I didn’t want to visit and would have to keep the TV volume down lower than I already do. I told him a friend would visit on Thursday, to just hold on. I asked if he needed anything, “Just you. I just want a piece of you!” He said, trying to be funny. It wasn’t. I felt him trying to carve out his piece of me and I’m a little too boundary happy lately, so I sent him home both times he knocked. Then I cooked some chicken.
I knocked on his door a few days later to check on him, and he was out cold according to his caretaker. I decided not to worry about him anymore. Sunday morning at about 3:30 I heard sirens, and instead of stopping in front of the old folks home like they usually do, they stopped in front of my house. I looked out into the hall, they were taking him away. He was awake and alert.
He came back at 10am, knocked on my door, and asked me for a hammer. He was locked out. I guess he wanted to bang the key into the lock. I had him sit down and I called the landlord. Too agitated to sit he got up and left, borrowed a hammer from someone else. Of course when he banged on his door enough, his caretaker woke up and let him in. She’d locked the deadbolt and gone to sleep.
Posted by allison at June 17, 2005 03:34 PM