I knew Nellie from a very young age. Her mother divorced her dad long before I remember and she had a younger sister. Her mother was also a heavy smoker. I have a memory of playing at her house one day and smelling the heavy smoke. I don't really know if it was this exposure to this neighbor or some other situation, but I learned at quite a young age not to shun or judge people who struggled with these types of problems. Nellie also developed some physical problems at a young age. By the time she was twelve she was diagnosed as a diabetic. Despite this physical issue, she developed some amazing skills as an athlete, and by high school she was among some of the most notorious athletes in the school. Some time after that she developed problems with her kidney and eventually died from kidney failure.
Jill moved into the neighborhood when we were teens. It's a little difficult to describe her. She was a mix of both serious and sarcastic. We were always friendly. After high school, she was diagnosed as bipolar. She was adopted and longed to find out who her birth mother was. I don't know the details, but it seems like something happened there that wasn't pleasant and it was disappointing. Perhaps as part of her struggles with her bipolar tendencies, she got addicted to drugs and struggled for some time with trying to get over that addiction. I never heard if she fully recovered, but the effects of it likely caused damage in her kidneys and she ended up one day dying in her sleep from sudden kidney failure. This one was a surprise to me, because I had a friendly chat with her two days before while we were both headed home.I don't have a picture for this next person, but I'd like to talk about it. I may have mentioned before an experience of witnessing a co-worker nearly dying while I was at work. This particular lady was a special person to me since she was the first one to welcome me. Some of the others thought she was trying to intimidate me, because she'd come to my cubicle and stand there lost in thought. It didn't bother me at all. We were friends almost immediately. It was probably about a year after I was working there when it happened, and I'm not quite sure which condition it was that caused it--she had several problems. My best guess is that it was a heart attack. I saw everything that happened from the convulsions to the air rasp in the end before the doctor got there to work on her. She ended up coming back that day, but died a few weeks later. It was the last time I saw her. Some of the others went to visit her in the hospital, but I didn't think I could handle it, and I'm glad I didn't, because they all came back regretting that they went. It was too much for them to see her like that.
In reviewing all of these memories, I'm reminded very much of something I'm quite passionate about, and that's the importance and value of how you treat people in your lives. It doesn't matter where you are or what environment you're in, the way you are treating the other people around you matters. It may be the only moment you deal with them, but that moment matters. Even if they are suffering so much that they reject it, keep doing it. Ultimately, you come to peace with yourself, knowing that your efforts were genuine and sincere. I certainly hope those people find their peace also.
