Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Missing The Hummingbird Whisperer...


There are not many events that could bring me out of my sabbatical on the Island of Zanzibar. Two events have taken place to draw me back to reality for a bit. One of which I'll discuss in this post, the other will have to wait.
Had you been a loyal reader you might remember my posts back in May of 2009 about my garden and how my neighbor was a "true" gardener or my post from Aug of 2009 and My Neighbors The Hummingbird Whisperers". These neighbors built their house at the same time we did and have tolerated more than their share over the last 15 years from our side of the fence. It's so hard for me to even write about this, but our dear friend and neighbor, Kevin, lost his battle with cancer last week. He was 48. Like most people who lose someone they care about, it's not real yet. Kevin and his wife are two of the kindest people you could ever hope to live next to. They were not nosy and didn't complain when I was. As a matter of fact, they never complained when our dogs barked at them or when we were loud or ever for anything. Kevin was an easygoing, roll with it kind of person...as far as we knew. I wish we knew him better, I wish I had played more pool with him, drank more beer with him, etc.

I used to call him the Hummingbird Whisperer because we both had hummingbird feeders on our back decks, but theirs always had hummingbirds buzzing all around it and ours would be empty. After we found out he had passed away we were sitting on our back deck and hummingbirds were litterally buzzing past our heads and there were a bunch of them...like never before. I thought to myself, "Must be Kev's way of letting us know he's OK now"...of course he's probably up in heaven listening to this saying, "Sure, whatever you want to believe" and having a good chuckle over it.

Kevin always had a remarkable garden...he grew pumpkins so big you couldn't pick them up. One year they used 3 or 4 huge pumpkins in a Fall display in their front yard. One night Kevin heard something out front and woke in time to watch some kids try to lift the pumpkins they had rolled to the street, into a pick up. I don't think any made it into the truck and Kev got a good laugh. This year he had some help, but he still planted his garden. His wife gave my daughter one of the small watermelons from his garden. She kept all the seeds from it so we can plant them next year. Wouldn't it be cool if we could do that every year and 20 years from now we would still have watermelons from Kevin's garden? Ok, now Kevin is up there saying "Um, I've seen your gardening skills, good luck with that!"
It never seems to make sense when someone who is the epitome of "a good person" is taken from us too soon...I have to believe that God needed someone really special for some reason and chose Kevin...it doesn't make me feel better and it still seems unfair...I just feel so blessed to have known him at all. Thanks, Kev, for being a good example for us and our kids.