Unknown to me, that’s all, or only slightly known. Familiar, but not close. I expect (I hope) she was better known to others.
There’s an assisted living home down the hill from us, close to the stop where I catch the bus to work. Ours is a neighborhood of hills and uneven sidewalking–sidewalks seem to have been optional for 1960s developers; they stop and start mid-block all up and down these hills. The retirement home stands out for the perfect flatness of its surround and for the even, ordered right angle of sidewalk at its door, an expanse like a carpenter’s square laid flat, open and ready for the uncertain or unsteady footsteps of the residents.
Of course, residents of an assisted living home are not the people most apt and able to get out and about. I don’t expect to see them crossing the street to the jogging trail. But it has struck me, over the years, how seldom I see anyone walking on the grounds, or taking the sun on the patio at the end of one of the building’s long arms.
Except for one woman. For the last couple of years (months run together) I’d see a gray-haired woman wearing a patterned fleece and pushing a walker up and down the two long sides of that carpenter’s square. I know it had been some time (that vagueness of a year, or two, or three…) because in the fall I noticed she looked distinctly older than she had when we first greeted each other. Her schedule varied, as mine did, but I’d see her several times a week as I headed to or from the bus, or out for a run. We’d cross paths on the sidewalk and say hello, or I’d see her from the car when I passed on an errand.
We did exchange names, finally. I had said hello to her too often not to introduce myself. Then I promptly forget her last name, as she likely forgot mine. We were just distant neighbors, enjoying the same sunshine, watching the same leaves fall. 
We had a week of cold and snow in December, more than we’re used to (though the newspaper has just informed us that no records were set, except perhaps for drought). Definitely too much to push a walker through. I noticed her absence as I picked my way through the ice to the bus stop, but the snow melted and the weeks passed and I haven’t seen her since. It may be she is now bedridden; I think it’s more likely that she’s died. I didn’t know her–certainly not well enough to go into the home and ask, or to hunt for an obituary under that lost name.
I am thinking, instead, about the small pockets of presence we create in others’ lives, even if we don’t realize it. This is not a lament for anonymity or loneliness, but an acknowledgement of the many, many layers of friendship and acquaintance–some of them mica thin–that make up a life.
I do miss her.