My neighbor, an extremely flamboyant and delightful man who likes me because I have excellent taste in Halloween door decorations and also I like his dog, saw me picking up a Chewy box from the office today (fresh cat food).
Neighbor: Oh my gosh, you have a critter? I didn’t know that!
Me: Yeah, two tiny cats, Dearborn and Polk.
Neighbor: Best names. I had no idea, I’ve never seen them!
Both of us: *pause*
Neighbor: Because…they are indoor cats…due to living…in a condo building…and I am an indoor idiot.
Me: If it’s any consolation I have said much dumber things while being indoors.
Neighbor: Oddly, it is.
I’ve been thinking about this post since last night, and wondering how to talk about this because I’m not sure how or if I should, it’s very strange.
I’ve known this neighbor since I moved in, and I didn’t mention him much because we would talk occasionally but nothing of interest to anyone other than me. During the early quarantine, we were generally the ones bringing up the entire floor’s packages from the mail room, and I gave him a couple of masks I made. So we’ve been in that limbo of “not really friends but friendly” where we talk about his dog or my dinner plans in the elevator.
Last night, as I was going out for a walk, a woman I’d never seen before stopped me in the hallway and said, “Do you know Mike in the other unit?”
I said I did, a little, and she said, “He’s my brother – he’s in the hospital.”
I didn’t get all the details, but Mike was in some kind of accident and is hospitalized with severe head trauma, with low expectation of recovery. She and their mother are staying in his unit (another sister is looking after his dog) until things stabilize out, one way or another.
I offered to help out if they need someone to run errands or look after the place or whatever, and gave her my phone number, the things a neighbor does. It’s just jarring and chilling, the reminder of how fragile life is. Mike celebrated his birthday like ten days ago; he’s about my age, lives alone with his dog, and after my own TBI eighteen months ago I can’t stop thinking about the close parallels and the luck I had surviving.
In any case, where there’s life there’s hope; he’s Jewish (we’ve had a few conversations about holidays, and keeping kosher and such) so if anyone has the urge to say a Mi Sheberach for Mike son of Nona, I’m sure it would be appreciated.
2022 has not made any damn sense and it’s not starting to now.
I didn’t talk about this again on the tumblr because I felt a little weird about it, but I had a couple of people contact me about Mike, and I had to tell them I was sorry to say he had passed, because I THOUGHT HE HAD.
Walked out into the hallway today and fucking, there was Mike, big as life and twice as loud, and I said “Mike, what the fuck” and he hugged me.
As far as we could tell while shouting at each other excitedly in the hallway, there was a game of telephone that happened because Mike was subject to a legit miracle. I got the news from the building office who had it from his mother, and the disconnect apparently came in when his mother said “Well, we’re taking him off life support tomorrow” and very understandably everyone assumed he would pass the following day.
Except they took him off life support and he just…didn’t die? The doctors said he might take a few days to pass so the family literally packed up all his shit and gave most of it away, they adopted out his dog, sublet his condo, and then one day like a MONTH LATER this tenacious asshole just woke the fuck up!
He’s been in rehab for months and he’s still got some issues with his leg and his cognition, but he has all his memory, can read and write (they didn’t think even if he did wake up he’d do either ever again), knew who I was, seemed totally lucid and fine. He’s starting back at work in July.
So he’s moving back in with no stuff, his poor dog died, he almost died of a TBI during a pandemic and woke up and the pandemic was STILL GOING ON. Meanwhile I’ve thought sadly about him when I walked past his door and been trying to process the weird grief of KIND OF knowing someone who died, along with a real sense of “That could have been me” and he’s been in River North lifting weights.
Anyway I was on my way to Target so while I was there I got him a giftcard to buy himself some new home goods and a bottle of their finest $15 wine.
So I mean. Guess the prayers worked, guys, job well done.
WHAT THE FUCK.
HOLY SHIT????????
This is what they mean when they say a post can give you emotional whiplash. But also holy fuck, the best type of pandemic miracle.
im running so late to this but holy fucking shit this is historic
last thing - while unions are obviously a collaborative effort and this incredible victory is the result of the hard work and sacrifices of many different people i think it’s absolutely essential to highlight the role of ALU’s founder chris smalls rn
chris was fired by amazon in 2020 for organizing a walk-out in the wake of their absolutely criminal handling of covid protocols in staten island. in a meeting with bezos and other amazon execs amazon’s lawyer was caught bragging that he wasnt “smart” or “articulate” enough to organize against them…now he’s helped facilitate the first successful union vote in amazon’s history - eat shit!
I know that John Krasinski would never do this. But I can’t get it out of my head that he took the time out of his day to write a stupid bad review for Living With Yourself in order to promote A Quiet Place
