From chaos to calm; goodbye to a lovely neighbor.

Facebook is good for a lot of reasons.

If it’s your birthday, you get a ton of messages.

In this case, I got a group message about much sadder news:  our former neighbor on Greer Road, the street we grew up on in Palo Alto, had died.

Her daughter Kris wrote us — “The Gerards of Greer Road”.

I forwarded it to my Mom, who hadn’t known Marilyn was ill.

I asked Kris for her street address so my Mom and I could wrote condolence cards.  

Facebook is not the ideal way to learn something sad… but as I wrote Kris, it’s timely and I’m grateful we can be there again for Kris —

because even though she moved away years ago, we are still ‘neighbors of the heart’.

We will miss you, Marilyn. 

You were a wonderful woman.