In my street

I live in the suburbs, but it's pretty anonymous living here really. In my street there's a real mixture of people and housing: villa's, flats and everything in between. Today I learned that my neighbour, just 2 doors down passed away just over 2 weeks ago. I knew his name and sometimes we exchanged pleasantries like 'how are you' or 'nice day, isnt' it', but that was it. Mind you he pretty much kept to himself. But anyway, apparently he had moved to a care facility a couple of months back and he died there at age 92. I must say I was wondering where he was as I hadn't seen him in a while. But then I knew he had always wanted to visit his daughters in Australia so I thought that maybe he'd finally gone to see them as he'd been planning to for a while. It makes me sad that I had no idea he'd moved to a care facility, let alone died. Makes me realise how I miss having neighbours that you know. I barely know my next door neighbours. On one side I sort of know them and their little girl and Annabel have recently become friends (yay!) but until today I hadn't been in their house since they bought it about 2 years ago. And my neighbour on the other side (an elderly lady) I don't even know her name! How sad is that?When I grew up we had so many kids in the street. Everybody knew each other and parents would often just pop over for a coffee or something. I wish I had that here. Then again, I don't feel comfortable letting my kids play out on the street like I used to when I was little, eventhough my street is a dead-end cars still come hooning down it (esp. the guy in the flat behind my house). Don't really know where I"m going with this post. I'm just not accepting of the fact that this is a sign of the times we live in now? Each to their own? Or perhaps it has more to do with the demographic of my street? Great variety of socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicity, age, etc.