Two years ago I was simply the quiet neighbor who watered plants in the afternoon, greeted people politely across the fence, and avoided becoming involved in other people’s conflicts. Everything changed the afternoon I saw Harold Bennett crying in the yard of the small wooden house beside mine in Springfield, Illinois, a man who had already reached eighty years of life yet still carried a dignity that made everyone in the neighborhood respect him.
He was the kind of neighbor who repaired broken gates without asking for payment and who always asked about your family even if he barely knew you, yet that afternoon his shoulders trembled while he stared at the house as if it were slipping away from him.
He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his worn flannel shirt and said in a voice that carried more exhaustion than anger, “My dear, they want to take everything from me because my nephews claim I cannot live alone anymore and they plan to place me in a nursing facility while they sell the house.”