Last month I happened to go back to the building in a big city where I used to live when my kids were very young. We had a very lovely elderly couple as neighbors: a man and a woman in their 70s, sweet, easy going, very friendly. They lived next door to each other, in adjacent apartments one floor below me. Luckily, the guy was hard of hearing and was not at all disturbed if my kids kicked up a racket. The woman was someone i admired greatly: always very positive, out-going, kind to everyone she met. She exhuded love. We became friends.

I found out that she had been born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, and as a child was sent to England before WWII, where she eventually married an American GI and came with him to the States. I don't think she ever saw her family again. In her old age she kept memories of Vienna and I would at times play her music videos on YouTube with tunes from her youth. Then her boyfriend got sick, she cared for him; soon after he died. I did not see her as much for a while, as she went to live with her daughter, then she was back and came to say good-bye: this time she was moving in with her daughter for good, she was in her mid-eighties by then. For several years we stayed in touch... then i may have dropped the ball. I am not sure if she is alive today.

So last month at the entrance to the building which used to be my home I suddenly saw a little plaque on the ground. It was propped against a thin young tree with white bark. The tree was obviously new. The plaque read: In Honor of Jane Doe from the Family of John Q. Public. I was so shocked i could not believe my eyes. My neighbors were not married, so their last names are different, but they must have been a couple for close to 20 years. The guy had two daughters - so SDs planted a tree and had a special mark of distinction added in HONOR of their SM. How amazing is that... Cannot say that i have ever seen anything like it. It did not say, In Memory - just in honor. I hope my old neighbor is alive, and will try to get in touch with her daughter to let her know - if she does not know yet - what a wonderful gesture that was.

Appropriately, one of the songs she liked to listen to goes, Im Prater blühn wieder die Bäume - The trees are blooming again in Prater garden.