Everybody, Always

we’re already at our house and sometimes a little past it before anyone
starts moving.
Here’s why we do it: we can’t love people we don’t know. You can’t
either. Saying we love our neighbors is simple. But guess what? Doing it
is too. Just throw them a parade. We don’t think Jesus’ command to “love
your neighbor” is a metaphor for something else. We think it means
we’re supposed to actually love our neighbors. Engage them. Delight in
them. Throw a party for them. When joy is a habit, love is a reflex.
Because we’ve been putting on the parade for decades, we know all
the people who live near us. I don’t know if they’ve learned anything
from us, but we’ve learned a ton about loving each other from them. God
didn’t give us neighbors to be our projects; He surrounded us with them
to be our teachers.
We don’t have a plan for the parade. This cuts down on the
preparation time. It’s just as well. Love doesn’t obey all the rules we try
to give it anyway. A week before the parade each year, we knock on a few
of our neighbors’ front doors and pick a grand marshal and a queen from
among them. Being picked as the queen is a big deal in our neighborhood.
Carol got the nod one year. A decade later, people still bowed to Carol
when they saw her at the corner market or the gas station and called her
“Your Majesty.” It was just beautiful.
One year, because of the battle raging inside Carol, she didn’t think
she would be able to walk the parade route from the cul-de-sac to our
house where the parade ends. I have an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle
with a sidecar. That year, I put Carol in the sidecar and gave her a ride.
She was the hit of the parade because all the neighbors knew about the
cancer she had been staring down. Carol, elegant as always, waved to
everyone, and they waved back. Just before we got to the end of the
parade route, Carol turned to me and took a deep, thought-filled breath. It
was as if she were going through the highlight reel of her life when she
said, “You know, Bob, I’m really going to miss this parade.” I looked at
my neighbor in the sidecar next to me and said, “Me too, Carol. Me too.”