And Then My Neighbor Died

Relationships can be tough. How two people can stay together through all the life that comes at you from every which way is sometimes amazing. All the years rush by but it's the days that seem to drag on. Especially when they are days that you aren't at your best. There are days when you are petty and crabby, or he is petty and crabby, or you are mad at him for not being someone else or he is mad at you for the same. And you are tied by the bonds of promises made in a church, and the family you have made together, by the life together that is nine years old but still a struggle some days even when it should be easy by now, or at least it seems like it should be.
So when you've had that day, that day when in the back of both of your minds you're wondering how many times you're going to have this same freaking argument and how unbelievably tired of all of it you both are.....and you're on the verge of having a completely rotten weekend and maybe week because I especially don't ever let anything go - I'm petty like that......and you suddenly hear news that is unbelievable, you reconsider your day.
As we were preparing to head out to see HAPPY FEET today, there were many elderly people coming out of my neighbors house. There have been elderly people there for the past couple of days, but I sort of assumed he had parents or aunts and uncles in town. One gentleman said goodbye to a few people who left, then stopped my husband as he was walking out of the house to talk to him. From across the street I saw my husbands jaw drop and heard the words "DIED?"
Our neighbor, with whom we shared a portico entrance to our appts was a nice guy with three kids. He was a dad who played football out on the green, and who cooked out. He had a teenager and two little kids. On Halloween he sat outside and passed out candy, and brought out a really cool haunted house thing that was all lit up with candles to decorate the porch. We liked him, he was friendly but always seemed busy, bustling up and down his stairs and going to and fro. Apparently on Tuesday he left the house to go jogging, got about 100 feet to our corner, and dropped dead at the age of 49. We're assuming it was a heart attack but we don't really know.
I sat and cried in the car, and most of the way down the street as my husband tried to calm me and tell me that everything was okay.

What he didn't realize was that I wasn't crying because our neighbor was dead. I was crying because I was glad that he was alive for me to be angry with.