My Neighbor Artie

Early one morning in December of '02 or '03 everyone in the house was awakened by my dogs barking hysterically. I had large tubular wind chimes that were making a racket and our motion sensor lights were turning on and off like a strobe light. After a few minutes things settled down.

My husband got ready for work and left at his usual time. A short time later my daughter got dressed and as she was walking to the bus stop our neighbor told her that our neighbor Artie had died. She came back in the house crying and told me that he died. He wasn't really that old, somewhere in his late sixties to mid seventies so it was a surprise that he died as he was healthy. I called my mother in-law to come over to see my boys off to school so I could go to check on his wife Stella.

A day or so later my friend Kathy had told me that Artie had lost his Wedding Ring a few years before and Stella was upset that he would not have it on when he was buried. Kathy decided to look around the house to try to find it. She had all but given up on finding the ring when something caught her eye in the track of the sliding glass door. It was his Wedding Ring! Somehow it ended up there unexplained and undamaged so Stella was able to bury Artie with his ring.

As a side note, my husband didn't like my wind chimes because they were loud and sounded more like a gong than a chime so we tied them so they couldn't chime. BUT every once in awhile we would hear them chime/gong. At first every time we heard them someone would go to see if they became untied but they never did. So for awhile we would just say, "Hi Artie" until my husband took them down.