We have an elderly neighbor who lives alone.
I feel we have a responsibility to check up on her, especially during weather extremes. In our area, we get severe heat in the summer and cold in the winter. We make our neighbor is healthy and safe. My husband and I do everything we can to make her life easier. Our one neighbor has been a widow for nearly ten years. She gets along just fine on her own for most of the year. The problem is the Winter weather, when there’s so much snow and high winds. We sometimes lose power for hours or even days at a time and our neighbor has no way to heat her home. She is super independent and stubborn at times. She feels that she’s imposing on us when she comes over to stay at our house. During a power failure, we utilize a wood stove. It easily heats our home without any electricity. It even features a cooktop area so I can prepare stews and soups. I can keep everyone fed. I would still like to have a standby generator installed. It would keep our HVAC system, water heater and other appliances running during power outages. We’ve offered to set up a generator to power the two houses, but our neighbor doesn’t want to invest in the rather high price of purchase and installation. For now, we’ll just insist the neighbor come to our house and take advantage of our wood stove. I also make sure that when we have our furnace and air conditioner serviced, the technician also goes next door to take care of our neighbor’s HVAC equipment as well. I like to make sure her heating and cooling system is operating as reliably and safely as possible.