A butterfly effect

My upstairs neighbor was a peculiar man. He was very outgoing, loved walking around in his neighborhood, and was gone as many hours as working people but never the office hours. Besides, he was retired. He cheered for beautiful women and always waved and literally applauded when we passed by his 4th-floor window. I liked him up there in his window acting all enthusiastic. If he had a sticker it would say ‘keep at arm’s length at all times.' Because whenever we would pass each other on the stairs he would grab my face and plant a kiss on my mouth if he saw a chance. I was actually really good at dodging this old but strong man. I remember times I saw him in the streets when he would cheer and tell the person that I was walking with that I was the best. Almost like a commercial shouted across the street. It would be awkward if it wasn’t so weird that it was funny. Or he came up behind me and basically jumped me to plant hugs and kisses on me. I thought I knew what was behind his strange behavior towards me, it was a simple act of kindness between neighbors as far as I was concerned. He however never got over his gratitude.

A few months ago the neighbor on his floor called the paramedics to get him help after he heard him collapsing next door. The hospital called one of the other neighbors the next day that he had not made it to the next day. Weird that they did that. Privacy ‘n’ all, but hospitals don’t want to get stuck with dead people either, and who would. It was left to the authorities to find out if he had any family. That’s how we all came to realize that he had never shared any personal information. Was he some sort of happy recluse of the social kind?

Most of the residents of our building moved in here about forty years ago. Some of them have known each other since then because there are only ten apartments and we share one staircase. So we do know our fellow stairs mates but we don’t really know everybody. I keep hearing all kinds of background stories about my different neighbors in chance meetings with people that turn out to know them from when they were growing up together. I just moved here twenty years ago so I like to think I have been here a minute but we all have our pasts of course.

On a day to day, we talk tiny things because we all have our lives to live. You just don’t stop in the middle of walking up to and from your house to talk for a long time. Over the last pandemic, things changed a little in that regard I must say. Especially with this unsettling life-altering cloud of uncertainty hanging over us, we are chitchatting more than before. We are typically not the gossiping neighborhood so all conversations can be joined by everybody and there are days that a simple trip to the market takes half a day because I keep running into people and end up talking to them about all kinds of things. So we do have a warm and loving area that is part of our common living success. The kind of neighborhood where you can ask for a favor and rely on people to try their best for you. The times I do hear about anybody not liking somebody it is just that, no fights or long going feuds.

So of course when we heard about our deceased neighbor not having anybody in the world to bury him, we decided to pay him our respects and attend the funeral as his neighbors. A very tasteful graveyard and chapel. I could tell that the undertaker took great pride and honor in the last voyage that people take on this earth. There were more of them than us at this tiny funeral for a man we all hardly knew yet most of us had lived alongside him for decades. We did say some nice things about him. It was a very nice funeral, I have to say. At the risk of being inappropriate, I did decide to ask what usually takes place when people have nobody at all showup. They still do it as they did in this case and I found that so very comforting to know. I have a lot of experience in attending funerals. I lost a lot of people in my life already. You do get used to that I suppose, but this cemetery was a first for me. And the size of this event was entirely new to me. So this is what it looks like when nobody is left in your life. When we came back to the house we agreed to have a toast in his name on the nearby square at a later date.

In the weeks after, more and more background info about the man that we knew nothing about surfaced. We kept having to tell people that yes, he had passed away,as and then somehow more stories piled up. There was more to him than we all could have imagined. I felt the need to keep notes in a little black book. I have a lot of those notebooks lying around in different colors even. I love taking notes and drawings to remember trips and organize my thoughts. It helped me out tremendously when I was going through my very personal trauma of losing my father. I am a firm believer in that if people just journal more, we would need a lot less therapy. It turns out that our mysterious neighbor was orphaned at a very young age and spent time in institutions. Maybe he had nobody to take him in. He was a frequent guest of a few bars not far from our building where he would talk a lot more. That is when we learned that he used to live in a home for teens that are basically too old to get adopted.

I know about such a place because my father used to be a live-in coach in one of those homes. Nowadays counselors only spend weekends and certain nights there in rotation. But back in those days, my dad lived with these kids to mimic a parent situation. Although my dad couldn’t have been much older than some of them, a few years makes a huge difference when you are a young impressionable kid. I can’t help but feel proud that my dad was a father figure long before he became my real dad. And it explains his excellent parenting skills. He told me stories about this time in his life but I forgot about the details, in fact, it had been years that I thought of them. What a nice way to be reminded of my awesome father in this utterly unexpected way.

A few weeks go by and I receive a letter from a bank. It wasn’t my bank and I don’t love paper mail because of the many horrible letters I have gotten over the years when I was struggling with money. I especially don’t go for the tone of those letters, so they get thrown on a pile, end up under a book and I usually don’t find them again until I tidy up. But I do tidy up and so I opened this letter a few days later. In it was an unsettling story that still doesn’t really sink in.

Somehow, there is a savings account that was started many decades ago by a teen that started saving by collecting stamps or stickers worth five cents or so. A typical way for kids to learn about how you can start saving your money and invest later on. Something oldskool. Cute in a way. But this one account had been forgotten about and the bank had been trying to figure out who its beneficiary was. Apparently, this teen was been put on this path by his mentor and when they started the savings account for him, both of them had to sign for it. And then life happened. In this case, both of the lives had ended. The names on the account were my neighbor and my father. That was in itself mindblowing, but the small print on this account stated that the ownership of the account was transferable to a living relative of either one. The bank has found out that my neighbor didn’t father any children, but my dad is my dad. And they accidentally saw my dad’s last name on the same address as my neighbor. It was truly a longshot. I never married and I am the last one of my family line. So they asked me to reach out to them to confirm my identity since they have a strong indication that this mystery relative could be me. The account has an amount of $20.000 in it today. How small beginnings can have huge side effects. A butterfly effect.

So here I am, not knowing how to feel about this unbelievable coincidence that the neighbor I have been trying to dodge for years has been inspired by my own father to be responsible about money. I wonder if that was truly behind this overly enthusiastic response every time he saw me. Why didn’t he tell me that he knew my dad? Didn’t he know that his coach was my dad? All these unanswered questions are running through my brain. It is time to whip out one of my little notebooks and that particular black notebook and start the process of organizing all of this.