A year ago my best friend died.
He was at home in his room, playing video games. He would almost hide in his room most of the time, as he shared the house with his sister, his sister’s daughter (his niece), the niece’s two kids, and whatever person was his niece’s “friend” that week. He was no lover of chaos, so the room was his retreat.
Lest I make him sound like some kind of a loser, living with his sister, let me explain that the house was originally their parents’ home. My friend left his good paying job across the state to move in with his mother, when she could no longer quite make it living by herself, for health reasons. He found a new job in this area… but when the economy tanked, he had too little time on that job to survive the cutbacks. So while taking care of his mother, he worked what jobs he could. It was hard on him, and I had to help him out with short term loans at times — which I didn’t mind a bit, because he’d helped me in the same way earlier when I was between jobs.