Farewell to the Neighbors

This is so sad. Our next door neighbors moved. Joan moved into the house next door just a year or so after we arrived. (Back in the 90s!! Okay, 1999 but still.) She married Tim a few years later and they have been the best neighbors. They have come to our aid time after time after time....I can feel that I'm already starting to gush. I was going to give a little more preamble first.

So Tim and Joan are awesome. Joan has a son living in Rhode Island whom they have been going to visit for many years and have come to love the state. Now that son is ill and needs some extra help. They both felt that they needed to move there. Tim found a great job there in the winter and headed out shortly after Christmas. Joan needed some time to wrap up her school year at the University before she could move. Troy and I were pretty much in total denial that they were actually going to go. I mean...and here's back to the gushing....what were we ever going to do without them? Any tool we needed got handed over the fence along with countless eggs and cups of sugar and home grown tomatoes. If it didn't get handed over it was because Tim was bringing it himself to help us work on some thing or other. And if the college kids down the street ever got rambunctious in the wee hours of the night, Tim was our guy to set them straight. All the long talks we have enjoyed together, all the stories we have shared. They are so dear to us.

In June, it happened. They really did move. We couldn't let them go without acknowledging them somehow so we hosted a party on our back porch, with an open invitation to our church members and neighbors to come bid them farewell. That party happened the same week as Emma's birthday as well as a Preslar family BBQ but it was the night that worked so that was the night that it happened.

Just a week or so later the whole ward showed up to help them really pack up the house - that was a herculean job for sure. You can't live in a house for almost 20 years without having accumulated quite a collection of things. The thought of us moving gives me nightmares. All the stuff! But it happened. I think it must have been quite a painful process.

We sent them off on a Friday night with a photo and some tears and also a deer sculpture that was in their back yard. They had forgotten about it and didn't have room in the truck so as a final gesture of over-the-fence generosity it got passed from their yard to ours. They might want it back at some point but until they do I have a sweet little deer standing in the shade of our apple tree reminding me of them.

We have new neighbors now. They are young professionals whom we don't know especially well. They have been kind and quiet and I wonder how much we will actually get to know them. I am glad they are here, even though it's still so strange to remember that the house to the south does not house our friends Tim and Joan!