Let's start here with driving home several times recently and as I come down my street I see an aged white haired man sitting in some type of a wheelchair, he's got a little dog with him, and he just sits at the corner and stares out, next time I come by he's at an opposite corner, he's obviously got an illness or ailment to him, but to me it's unknown. I try to figure out which of my neighbors it could possibly be, can't recall any of them with shock white hair, yet he's done by a part of the street where I know what's been sold, shouldn't be any newbees there.
About the 4th or 5th encounter I've got it, and it shocks me and make me stop in my own truck back in our garage to grieve for him. I feel some of the overwhelming sadness he must have felt as his life changed, I think of some related and unrelated snatches of time that defined his family. I think of my own moments of grief as I saw it play out in it's increments.
When I was young and about 27 years old I had moved to this town already, as I left the grocery one f the young men working at the store walked out with me and made sure I got to my car safely they had trouble with women and purses getting beat up and stolen recently, he was honest about it and I thanked him, his name was Tom Mennes I only knew him as Tom he'd been my bagger a few times in the store he was a nice kid some 9 or 10 years younger than me.
That Dominicks closed down, the next time I saw Tom was at Pop Eye's Chicken and while I waited for my order the manager was full blown screaming at him, I asked the manager to refrain from treating someone like that, told him there was no need especially in front of the customers, he told me he just a dumb kid and should be fired.
The next time I saw Tom he was working at Brown's Chicken up on NW Hwy across from my Abbott Real Estate Office, I smiled and waved to him happy (damn tears) he'd landed with a nice group of co-workers, the lady and man that owned the place were so happy they'd just gotten all new counters and seats put in, and they really liked Tom who we came to find out lived on my street, (I'd had his twin brother as a potential real estate client, they hadn't bought as they needed to straighten out some old credit matters that were haunting their history.)
With fresh tears in my eyes, I can say I don't know why bad things happen to good people, two nights later Tom was murdered in Brown along with the family that owned it, for Christ Sake I drove past it that night coming back from a showing up in Countryside condo's, it was horrible and it took years before DNA would catch the crooks.
Years later the father moved to Willow Condo's which was one of my main Real Estate Farms, and gave his house to the remaining twin whose wife Diane was on Dialysis waiting for a transplant . One night when the father (Mr. Mennes who had picketed with Rick & I years earlier over a garbage Transfer Station being built too close to our homes) walked into his own condo after having run down to get a paper from the lobby he returned to his unit, he was no longer alone, Mo was in the unit and would stab him some 15 times as part of a gang initiation and steal his Catholic rosary, another horrible death to deal with for his remaining son.
Mo, the actual stabber had grown up in the same schools as our son, I had been their room mother several times for Halloween Parties and Field Trips, I knew his GrandMa who was a good christian women and lived in Mr Mennes building, I didn't know his crackhead MOTHER who had moved him away to the gang infested portion of our town and virtually threw away a good life of a youngster, but I knew Mo the sophomore football player who could run swiftly and gracefully and make you think of a young Walter Peyton, and I remember that when he moved to the projects up by Dundee and Baldwin he told the boys he had troubles getting home at night due to gang members stopping him and messing with him as it's phrased. Mo's long gone to jail for life!
The last thing I heard with Mennes family was that Diane never got her transplant and had passed away about a year back.
So my neighbor down the street who sits looking 10 years older than me instead 10 years my junior is the remaining twin to Tom, he's had a hell of life if you think about the pain of soul experienced at not just losing people from his life, but losing them in a horrible manner.
I think of our own trials and loses, and do at some point know they all could have been worse!
We all walk through our days together knowing we're not quite alone in it. When one is weak, another is strong, that with time and care we can survive it all, enjoying all the great days in between. The Good outweighs the Bad, and Forgiveness walks hand in hand with Love, doesn't it?
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