Walking Past the Ending
They've moved Ron.

I don't always diffferentiate fiction from fact on this site. For the most part it should be obvious which is which. Let me tell you here and now you should always take the things I say with some caution.

On the other hand, you will not find me espousing crazy conspiracy theories unless I've made them up myself. Hopefully that's not too difficult to determine either.

I wrote about Ron in a piece on this site about five months ago. The piece is fiction (the spaceship with the purple and green blooded giant wasps from outer space is a clue), but the Ron character is based on a very real person, and a very likable guy.

Today when I walked past his house, the garage was empty. There were workman cleaning things up. He'd been moved out.

One of differences between fiction and fact is that in fiction there are endings. Not always happy, but there is some kind of conclusion. Except for a few stories like The Lady and the Tiger, you get a resolution.

I also like happy endings; but I'm not committed to them; I know that the happy ending isn't always the way a story should end. The previous post is an example with an ending that you may or may not consider happy; an old story of mine with a character based on a real person I know pretty well: myself.

In life we never get to see the full story, and almost never get things resolved. Even at the end of our own story, there's not a resolution, really, the narrative just stops when the power shuts off.

I don't know what happened to Ron. I could make an effort to find out, but I'm not sure how effective it would be; I don't even know his last name. I know his dementia had progressed; the last time I talked to him he was noticeably if only a little bit worse; he didn't know what day it was, and lost track of the conversation more frequently.

I can theorize what might have happened: his daughter put him in assisted living and, given he's got a friendly personality, he's made new friends and is happy there. I can imagine much darker scenarios too.

The invading wasps story talks about my mixed motivations for stopping to chat: I truly enjoyed his company but also imagined I was doing a good thing by keeping him company if only for five or ten minutes once or twice a week.

What I do know is that I will miss him and I want to be like him when I grow up.