JON WILCOX
Over the course of a few days in late February, I watched through my windows as workers emptied out my neighbor's house, filling one industrial dumpster and then another with the contents.
A sweet older couple had lived there since long before I arrived in the neighborhood. I didn't know them well, but we would wave and say hello. As my son grew old enough to toddle around my front yard, the husband would beeline over to coo at him like an adopted grandfather.
We kept our distance after the pandemic began but still waved. And then one day, an ambulance arrived and took the wife away. The husband left not long after. They never came back. I later heard that the wife had contracted COVID-19. She had survived, but in their weakened state, they had moved out of state to be closer to family.