My Indian American Neighbor

I could never remember my Indian American neighbor's name, even though we have been neighbors for more than a decade, even though he told me multiple times and I have his phone number, with his name in my cell phone. I am just bad with names.

I will call him Raj for now, even though his name starts with S, not R, for sure.

Raj is a very kind person. His wife of 30, 40 years just passed away from Ovarian cancer eight months ago. She was more than 10 years younger than him. From what I have learned over the years, in bits and pieces, and I might be totally wrong, Raj left India at a very young age to make a living in Europe.

He found a job by joining US military. When he was more than 30 years old, his family arranged a marriage for him from his hometown. He later on settled in America with his wife and two children. His older daughter married several years ago. He was a bit upset then that my family went for a long trip at the time and he couldn't invite us to her wedding. But he was then happy when we explained that we did try to find him before the trip, he and his family just happened to be not at home. He saved a plate of very delicious wedding food for us.

After his wife passed away, he stopped eating lunch and lost a lot of weight. I am very concerned until I learned that his younger son is not married yet and still lives with him. They try to have breakfast and dinner together often. Also, his veteran buddies in the area are looking out for each other.

I apologized to Raj for not remembering his name, again, possibly the third time.

He said, no worries, I do that often too.

I said, yeah, I am also getting old, so it's getting worse.