Keith passed away this morning. We saw the fire truck and the ambulance pull up across the street, we saw Keith's mom ... it was awhile before we found out what was happening because, in our neighbourhood, it's Keith who finds out everything first and tells the rest of us. "Where's Keith? Why isn't he out there?" murmured my mom, peering through the shutters.

Finally a neighbour spoke to the medical examiner. Keith got up this morning, said he didn't feel well, went back to bed, and died. He was young (that is to say, younger than me). 

When I arrived on the block, straight from the airport, Keith was waiting to meet me, or that's how it seemed: he was outside, as he so often was, and walked over. Mom introduced us immediately and later explained that he'd tell the rest of the neighbourhood so I'd feel welcome: "Met Don and Martha's daughter, not Jill, the other one that none of us have seen before. Came back from Australia. Staying with them for now. No, too soon to tell." Dad said there was no point keeping things from Keith: it would only frustrate him, and he was the leader in keeping the street safe and neighbourly. He cut almost everyone's lawn. (Not ours, for historical reasons.) My impression was that he did it more for social reasons than for money.

He'd just bought a little red car, which he loved. "Imagine buying a sports car [haven't seen it, but imagining a convertible], and then dying right afterwards," I said, being a true daughter of California's car culture.

"Well, he's had the little red car for about a month, I think," my mom said, looking up. Mom looks on the bright side: he had the whole month. Drove it in and out and around several times a day, until the last few days during which, as we are piecing together, we had seen him less than usual.

Dad said, "Now I'll never know why the basketball hoop was removed." 

We live at a small T intersection. If the T was a person facing away from you, Keith and my parents would live below and above the person's right arm respectively, and in the T-person's left armpit there would be a wooden power pole with a rusty basketball hoop on it. According to Keith, who might have heard from his dad, it had been there since the 1920's. Recently we saw, through our shutters, something awful: a man from the county was wrenching the hoop off the pole. (And it took a lot of work: there were a lot of nails pounded in over the years.) Keith was out there with him, seemingly helping. Had Keith called the county for some reason? "No way - he loves that hoop. I'm sure he just saw the guy there and walked over to find out what was happening." Maybe complaints that it was dangerous to play ball right on the corner where turning cars couldn't see. Maybe there's a rule about use of the county-owned pole.

Dad said, "I was going to ask Keith, at the appropriate time."

Mom is taking some cookies over now. If I find out the story about the basketball hoop, I'll post an update here. But as it stands now, there's a good chance we'll never find out.