My next door neighbour died and I really miss him

I'm certainly glad I didn't write him off as the sexist old man next door

Photo: Tim Gordon

Since I moved to my place in 2019, my next door neighbour Bob and I had always exchanged some friendly banter and given each other a wave when we saw each other. A retired plasterer - he gave me advice when I was plastering my house, and as a keen gardener, I helped him with gardening advice for his illegal tobacco plantation. I’m sure there were many times when he looked over the fence and thought ‘bloody young people’ but he never let on as much. If we ever popped over to let him know we were hosting a birthday party at our place, he always responded with “Have a drink for me!”.

Our friendship was really cemented as Melbourne was emerging from one of its long lockdowns in 2021 and you had to show evidence of two doses of a covid vaccine in order to go out to pubs and clubs and other venues. Bob was all set with two doses of a vaccine, but not at all set with any knowledge at all about how to get the certificate to show up on his phone.

He sounded pretty defeated as he told me about how he was refused entry to the pub the night before because whatever documentation he’d tried to give them to show his vaccination status wasn’t right and he couldn’t get the bloody app to work.

“I can help you with that!” I confidently shot back.

I shouldn’t have been so confident, because it turned out to be much more complicated than just downloading the app and logging him in - he didn’t have a single government account online (which I fully respect, to be honest), and setting one up involved him needing to trust me with almost his full life history and a LOT of personal details.

Two hours later, I emerged from their lounge room victorious - Bob’s vaccine documents on the home screen of his iPhone with 300% magnified text.

Bob got into the pub that night, and I knew we would now be best friends forever.

Bob passed away a few weeks ago. At his funeral, his best mate from the pub shared a hilarious recount of Bob’s recent pub pranks, including fart bombing the other oldies and then pointing to them as the source of the disgusting fart smell.

Although I’m sure someone would have worked Bob’s vaccine certificate out for him eventually, I swelled with pride hearing the story, and knowing that I was the one who got Bob to the pub to let off fart bombs for the last few years of his life.

The week before he died, he asked me to help him shovel some dirt onto his front lawn in an attempt to fill the increasingly deep hole his car was creating. He watched me as I worked, and passionately told me about his newfound hatred of ‘cancel culture’. He’d learned about it that week from a Netflix documentary. It was only slightly subtle how much he was trying to get in with his young friend next door by telling me the one thing he knew about internet culture. There hadn’t been much in his life since his wife died a few weeks earlier. I knew most of his time was spent watching netflix, and I knew that the driveway chats we had most days were a highlight of his day, as well as mine. I’d told him a week earlier that he needed to find a hobby - he said ‘good idea’ and told me that I could expect to come home from work that day to find him wrestling a crocodile in the front yard.

Our beautiful intergenerational friendship didn’t change the fact that he was always at me with some sexist comment - I think half of him was serious and half of him enjoyed getting the rise out of me, because I would always tell him off for it. On my 5th or 6th wheelbarrow load, he taunted “Not bad for a girl!”.

I grinned at him and retorted: “Bob that’s sexist! You’d better watch out, or I’ll cancel you!”

Based on his reaction you’d forgive me for thinking it may have been the funniest joke I’ve ever told. And he was pretty happy with my levelling of his yard in the end too, so maybe my work wasn’t too bad for a girl.

I’ve missed Bob so much more than I ever thought I would over the last few weeks. I felt silly needing to take a week off work because the 85 year old man who lived next door to me had died. We were pretty unlikely mates. But we talked almost everyday, and there’s a big hole in my life without him.

It’s got me thinking about how often we miss out on some of the magic in life because we stay in our own little siloed lanes. Our algorithm led lives have us expecting to never disagree with someone, never discuss an opinion with compassion and to see difference as scary and repulsive.

The antidote to this I often hear people talk about is trying to click on opinions that are different from theirs when in the online world to keep the algorithm confused. And maybe there’s some merit to this.

But I want to propose a different antidote entirely. I want to propose that the antidote to the silo-ing the algorithm has imposed on us is to turn the internet off all together. To walk out our literal front doors, and get to know our next door neighbours.

Try not give up on them the first time they make a comment that bothers you. Ask them questions, try to understand them, find the places where you can connect (even if it is illegal gardening). That’s how we can truly connect across differences, and become a more connected and resillient society. And that is political.

I think I probably made Bob a little bit less sexist in his time, and I reckon he made me more tolerant and more accepting too. I’m certainly glad I didn’t write him off as the old sexist white man next door.

Thanks for being a great neighbour, Bob. If there’s an afterlife out there, I hope that you will have a drink for me.

---

Thanks for reading Practical Politics; my blog about small scale political action for ordinary people.

This blog is not how you should live your life, but how you could live your life.

So please, take what’s helpful and leave what isn’t.