Last March was the worst month of my life. My mother had been in hospice for two weeks. I was driving back and forth to the facility every day, an hour each way, trying to balance work and my kids and the feeling that time was running out. I was not sleeping. I was not eating properly. I was surviving.
One evening I pulled into my neighborhood and realized I had parked crooked. Not just a little crooked — truly, embarrassingly sideways, one wheel almost on the curb. I didn’t have the energy to fix it. I just went inside.
The next morning I found a note under my windshield wiper. My stomach dropped — I assumed it was an angry neighbor, a complaint, maybe a threat. I had heard stories.
The note said: “I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but I can tell something is. Your car has been parked at odd angles for a few days and you look exhausted when I see you walking in. I made extra soup last night. It’s in the blue container on your porch. You don’t have to eat it. You don’t have to knock. Just know that someone on this street sees you and is rooting for you. — Your neighbor in the yellow house.”
I sat on my front steps and cried for ten minutes. Then I ate the soup. It was chicken noodle, homemade, the best thing I had eaten in weeks.
My mother passed away eleven days later. The neighbor — her name is Patricia, I know now — brought flowers. She still waves every morning.
I think about that note a lot. About what it costs to pay attention to someone. Almost nothing. About what it means to receive that attention when you are drowning. Everything.