The Varied Responsibilities of a Board President

Ms. Alden had been 97, lived alone, and was still the #1 source of fresh-baked cookies during neighborhood birthdays. She died at 3:13am. Her meowing cat had alerted neighbors that something was amiss. Mr. Lamb had called an ambulance by 7am.

Deaths in the neighborhood always forced Morty to ponder his own mortality. Thinking that he might die made him want to eat steak, though according to his doctor eating steak could cause him to die too.

Esther rarely considered her own mortality because dying was not an option for her right now. It would not be fair to the cats. Still, deaths was annoying to her it its own way. It required sending flowers to strangers and the flower store shopkeeper was on her list for having made a favorable comment about Reagan three years ago.

Emery felt theoretically sad to hear that Ms. Alden had died, but in times like this he found himself unable to speak in anything but pithy maxims. He began a card that read, “I’m sorry for your terrible loss. This is a sad day.” It occurred to him that, should somebody he loved die, an impersonal card like this might be more annoying than not getting a card. He began again. “Thinking of you on this sad day.” Nope, not any better. He decided to call Esther and go in on her card.

Lucy had known Ms. Alden for her entire life and the loss felt like the death of a grandmother, albeit one she had not been close to (Ms. Alden was a good neighbor, but she had contained a slightly old-school bigoted edge…). Still, Lucy had eaten at least 500 birthday cookies between her and all of her cousins and was certain that making Ms. Alden’s cookies would make her feel better. She put all of the ingredients on the counter, whipped herself into a frenzy, then invited Emery down to taste-test with her. Emery was so happy to have a way to help that he went to Mr. Hertz first and demanded that the handover of a birthday cookies from his most recent birthday, which had just passed two days prior. Mr. Hertz obliged, and Emery and Lucy set out to make cookies, none of which ended up tasting like the sample cookie. By cookie 5 the task was becoming maddening and they quit before hitting on the correct combination of ingredients.

Bean and Aggie had only met Ms. Alden once, and didn’t like her. Because he was seen (in his own eyes) as somebody who did not beat around the bush, he did not mince words when he told Aggie how we felt about her death. “Whatever, it’s fine. I need coffee.”

Mr. Hertz did not find out that Ms. Alden was dead until a week later, when he tried to return a piece of mail that had mistakenly come to him. It was not unusual for he, who spent his entire life sitting at a local coffee shop, to somehow still miss out on major gossip.

Though late, however, he was the only person who made it to the florist, found a card, and laid a rose at 19’s door. To save face he blamed the rose on Lucy, then signed his card to the family with his names of all of his neighbors, leaving his at the bottom. His responsibilities as Board President were varied, after all. Varied but important.