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If you ask anyone older than 60 as to who has been in closed daily contact  longer with him for all his life (other than his spouse), you liable to get answers such as their parents  or children. But you leave home to established your own family; your children grow up  and move out; job or opportunity may make you move from one town to another.  In our case, our answer is our next door neighbor for over50+ years, Irish-Americans Matt and Joyce Crimmins.

We moved into our respectively new homes within one month of each other.  Our houses were the last two houses in the development in a dead end street.   Consequently, the two wives Sophia and Joyce struck up a close friendship. Over the  years each family added new children and they grew up together.  The events we shared are too numerous to list but too precious to forget.  Like the time early one morning when our son (together with the whole family to see him off) discovered at the airport on his first trip alone to China  that he forgot his passport. We called our neighbor, roused him out of bed,  with key to our house to find the passport, and had him drive to the airport with it so that  our son can depart. Another time we gave a surprise 60th birthday party for Matt within 3 hours after the rush completion of the re-modelling of  our home.I can go on and on . . .

Last year everyone learned the sad news that Joyce came down with stage  IIIc cancer.Treatments started including various new cancer fighting drugs. However, in  the past month the doctors exhausted their options and advised hospice  care only. For the past couple of months, her entire family and we lived through the cruel experience watching her wasting away and her gradual decline. She finally passed away in her sleep one night last week. With advance notice, her funeral and service were well planned. My wife sang “Ave Maria” during the service. Her youngest son read a farewell letter at the post burial lunch that left not a dry eye in the  audience.  Since my own Mother died some 22+ years ago,  I have not felt such emotional pain  even though Joyce was not related to me in anyway. But 50+ years’ almost daily contact and living next door to each other, we have become the “Chinese branch of this Irish-American family”; we feel that we lost a relative closer  to us  only  next to our spouse in  contact duration.  Our children came back from far away to be at the service and  pay their respects. This article is our feeble attempt to express our feelings of  remembrance and condolences.