Queen Village grieves for a lost neighbor

When Paco died in April, there was a shared mourning on South Fairhill Street. We'd lost our elder statesman, our neighborhood memory, our common denominator.

Everyone on our Queen Village block knew Paco. We live in tight quarters here: Two lines of rowhouses separated by a tiny alley that can barely carry one car. We know our neighbors, like it or not.

We liked knowing Paco. He was ever-present: Dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, brimmed hat on head, walking to the corner coffee shop for his morning drink and the New York Times. Sweeping our street, ignoring property lines. Talking to one neighbor or another, their voices raised because of Paco's poor hearing.

Paco had purchased three properties on our block long before gentrification began to change our neighborhood. I would see neighbors of all ages, both genders, different colors, stop and talk to him on his front stoop, greeting him with a hug or handshake. When I met people who lived on the block, we inevitably found we had a similar bond with Paco. In so many ways, he brought people together.

I learned of Paco's death via a text message from my next-door neighbor. Cancer had struck hard and fast, whisking him away. No, we cried together, we hadn't had a chance to say goodbye. I passed the message on to another neighbor, to my sister, to friends who'd heard me speak of Paco in the past. At least, we comforted each other, he was finally reunited with his beloved wife.

Marga's loss, in 2005, had also shaken our little street. Paco had pulled us all into his grief. I remember the night Marga died, hearing Paco's wails piercing the shared wall of our homes. I went over to comfort him. I pulled the white sheet over her face.

That night, Paco walked up and down the alley, sobbing. Helpless, I watched from my third-floor window. I saw other neighbors doing the same.

For months after Marga's death, Paco seemed numb. But we neighbors rallied around him, inviting him to dinner, helping him clean his home. As he gradually emerged from his grief, he would sing in Spanish as he strolled, saying he hoped the words reached his wife in heaven. He had two angel wings tattooed on his back in her memory.

For a few years, he seemed to flourish. He moved from the house next door to me to another he owned two doors down. An artist, he painted the stucco orange and installed decorative tiles around the front door, creating a building that seemed better suited for his native Mexico. A collector, he scoured thrift stores and trash piles for treasures to fill the house.

Last summer, I spent a few weeks creating a mosaic on a neighbor's wall. Paco found tiles for me. He sometimes sat on the bench in front of my house and watched me as I tediously glued the broken pieces onto the wall. One day, he joined me in the work, and we worked side by side in comfortable silence.

But at 76, Paco's health was failing. He was growing increasingly frail, falling in his home a few times. He was losing his sight, and his hearing, already poor, grew worse.

Paco had always been there for the neighborhood. He'd always been there for me. He was the first neighbor to welcome me to the block when I'd moved in. He was the person who left a teddy bear on my front steps when I had to put my cat to sleep. He once told me he watched to make sure I got home safely at night.

Now it was time for me, and the other neighbors, to be there for him. We didn't discuss it. We just did it. If it snowed, one of us shoveled the sidewalk in front of his house. We brought him meals in the dead of winter. We'd join arms and walk with him in the heat of summer.

When I'd run into different neighbors, people whose names I did not know but recognized as friends of Paco's, we stopped and fretted about his health. We never imagined a world, a block, without him.

One of my best friends lives in a New York City high-rise, and when I visited her recently, I noticed a death notice posted on a bulletin board near the mailboxes. I asked her if she knew the woman who'd died.

"We don't talk to our neighbors here," she said simply.

We know our neighbors. We take care of our neighbors. Or at least we try.