This comes up because I have an older neighbor who lives behind me who's been a minor irritant over the past 15 years. Nothing big, just nit-picking things.
I remember the first time I met him we barely said hello before he told me he had a 35 year old mail order bride from Asia. Which seemed to me a strange thing to tell your neighbor the first five minutes you meet him. Later I figured he might still be on his honeymoon.
Because he takes pride in his back yard he's always having crews trim trees and so on. And once in a while they drop branches in my yard. Which I promptly put back over the fence.
One time they even came on my side of the fence and trimmed some branches off one of my trees that were sticking over his fence. At that point I wrote him a letter. And explained that he could legally trim anything growing over the fence line. But couldn't have his people in my yard cutting my trees. And I cited the Arizona Revised Statutes to make my point. He never wrote back. Nor did he speak after that when he saw me in my back yard.
Another time, a few years earlier, he chastised me for trimming one of my own trees. He liked it the way it was before I trimmed it because it partially blocked the view of his pool from my side of the fence. I told him I'd let it grow back - even though I wasn't especially interested about what was happening in his pool.
Over the years it's been a series of small incidents like that. Once he filled in a hole in the wall between our yards with some kind of liquid insulation that discolored my side of the fence. And it took me a while to clean it off.
Like I said, nothing big, just irritating stuff.
But for the past few months I haven’t seen him. He used to make a circuit each day, picking up leaves and doing other chores. And the only reason I’d notice him is because my second story bedroom overlooks his back yard.
But lately I've been wondering what happened to him. I wonder if he's okay. Is he sick? Did his wife go back to Asia? Did he have an accident?
And I mention this because all 15 years I've lived here I've been mostly negative about him. Now I'm wondering if he's okay and can't figure out why.
Am I developing compassion for a neighbor who seemed to enjoy being an irritant? Have I lost my ability to be resentful?
