well, i missed yesterday. i had several things i wanted to talk about, but now they're forgotten. i'm sure they'll pop up again sometime soon.

right now i'm thinking about my neighbor. he was a pain in the ass, but he had his reasons. he was on top of the world, ceo of some fortune 500 company, but he found himself drowning at the bottom of a bottle. the company had to say, "dude, sorry. you're gonna have to go." they paid him a stupid amount of money, in business terms some sort of golden parachute, retirement thing...i dunno. so he lost his wife, his son, his half a million dollar house and his life that he'd worked so hard for.

two years ago, he landed two townhouses down from us. one day on new year's eve, my husband befriended him. hubby always likes to get to know the neighbors, and being not from the south, he believes in neighborhoods and all that stands for.

mike, as we found out his name was, took my husband inside and showed him all his stuff. he had lots of it. he kept telling mark to take what he wanted. he didn't need it anymore. when he showed mark his gun, mark became concerned. he invited him to dinner and then over to our friends, in the complex, to spend new year's night with us. he spent several hours over there trying to convince him, afraid to leave him alone. mike finally conceeded.

of course all the man could do was feel sorry for himself. at the party that night, he trashed us all, and the place where we lived, calling it esentially the slums and us poor white trash. my sympathy quickly went to zero. seems mikey dear hasn't visited the east and west sides of this town.

of course, my drunken, moody new york neighbor didn't much like mike. and as mark(yes, same name as my hubby)sat on the other side of the table, he got really quiet. always a bad sign with mark. sure enough, just mere minutes later, he tries to punch mike. I don't think mark like mike's classification of us.

mike was in a bad way. there were a few mornings he woke up on the lawn outside the clubhouse, with management standing over him. he walked into the wrong townhouse on several occassions. with someone that far gone, we left him alone.

he'd clean up for awhile and his son would come to visit. those were the happiest i'd seen the man and him and his son did all sorts of things, any type of sports being their favorite.

but soon, we noticed the son not coming over anymore. he spent time in and out of rehab. but we'd see mike walk home from the liquor store across the street. then we noticed mike hanging out with the complex mooch, casper. casper is african american, his father having played in the negro leagues, but casper denied even being black(he was indian, instead). casper is one of those people in life that takes---and takes. he still owes my old neighbors two months rent on their garage. and when i saw him hanging with casper, i thought back to his comments about us. i guess we all become numb and accepting of our circumstances eventually.

with casper as one of his only friends, mike fell deeper and deeper into the bottle.

a few weeks ago, we noticed we hadn't seen mike in at least a week. his friend, who had once been his neighbor when he was married and who stuck by his side through all of this, came over one day. we asked if mike was all right. she said he wasn't. apparently, he was a diabetic. he hadn't been taking care of himself, and drinking on top of it, made it all worse. he'd slipped into a diabetic coma.

his parents and sister have been coming and going for weeks..staying in his house, driving his car, paying his rent.

we just learned yesterday that mike died. his service is tomorrow at 11.

no, i didn't know mike all that well, but these sorts of stories make me sad. he was a man that had everything, yet lost it all, including his life. alcohol does so much more damage than most anything else in our society.