When the Light Returns To Its Source
I saw the dead guy at dusk, lying across the walkway leading to a Catholic church. A drunk, maybe homeless, I thought at first, and steered clear. Yet something about his position and his absolute stillness bothered me. He was well-dressed. I stopped and went back for a closer look. Seeing no movement, I knelt down and said “Sir, sir, are you OK?” Still nothing, I asked again, no response.
I called 911 and, turning back to him, from some place deep and primordial, came what I believe was his last exhale. In three minutes, no more, the first responders were there. They took over, put him on a gurney, bundled him into the ambulance and took him away. They told me later, when I called to check, that he was already dead in the ambulance. Nothing to be done.
A massive, killer heart attack had cut him down. Turns out, he was a very popular teacher in the school at the church and was at an evening event. He probably stepped outside in the warm spring night, maybe needing some air, sensing something amiss, and collapsed where I found him. I assume he never knew that he shared that last moment with a stranger.
This memory resurfaced yesterday, because it was the anniversary of when I started keeping the journal which would lead to these Notes From the GratiDude. February 9, 2009, eleven years ago. I got out that first notebook to review some early entries and found this: “Bob in produce (I was working in a grocery store) told me how he was golfing yesterday with his cohort and they saw a guy lying down at the tee ahead. Turns out he was dead. Reminded me of finding the man at the Catholic church.”
I’m not a cop or a combat veteran, often encountering corpses on the ground. I don’t know if anyone in the golf group was either. I’m not used to seeing a dead body anywhere other than at a hospital or a funeral home. I’m not sure I’m used to that. Maybe even cops and soldiers don’t get used to it. They just do their jobs and suck it up.
There’s often a disconnect between the setting and someone’s death. Happening where it happened on that day can’t be imagined. Too many birds singing and too warm and seductive a day or twilight soft as velvet. Too far-fetched to even imagine in a bucolic setting like a church lawn or golf course.
It is a meditative trope to say “Be grateful for this day because it could be your last.” We hear it often. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just common and familiar. Every once in awhile you just get brought up short. On a given day someone innocently walks out their door to play golf or attend a school function and never comes back through it again.
I found out this teacher had a son in some mid western state, with whom I briefly communicated in the days to follow. Hopefully he knew what an impact his father had on students and others who knew him. That is legacy. Rumi wrote about this– “When the light returns to its source it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.” I take comfort in that.
