As I
approached the intersection I noticed two police cars parked on the bridge
across the street. "Crime Scene" tape blocked the sidewalk so I
crossed to the other side of the street and then crossed to the bridge. A crowd was gathering above the stream and
curiosity got the best of me. Once past
the police cars and crime tape, I jogged across to where others were
standing. A small group of smokers
leaned along the railing looking into the stream. I asked one woman what was going on and she
gestured with her cigarette, "there's a body in the water." I looked, while dodging the smoke that
drifted towards me. Sure enough, there
was a body in the water.
If I had
seen it on my own it would have taken a few minutes to recognize what I was
seeing. It was face down, snagged in a
tree limb that had washed down stream in the fullness of the spring
current. I noticed that the back was
broad and commented, "It looks like a man;" the woman gestured again pointing out that it
was only wearing a "G-string."
Sure enough, there was a thong. It was then that I fully realized that
the body was naked, except for the thong, and that the pale grey color was
actually skin and the broad back was the result of bloating.
I left
the smokers and walked around the park imagining life-stories that would end
with a body naked, bloated, snagged on a tree limb in a foot of water. Was she a hooker? A drug addict? A run-away.
Did anyone miss her? Had her life
been considered disposable by others? How does a person end up this way?
Headed
back to work I saw that the group was still gathered so I stopped to see if
they knew anymore. By now the stench of
death hung heavily in the air. I wanted
to get away from it, but that seemed disrespectful. I got to the railing just as the firemen
climbed into the water with the yellow body bag. They struggled to free the body from the tree
limb and eventually flopped it into the bag.
I noticed that the arms and legs were thin; I couldn't see a head. The woman next to me declared, "It doesn't
have a head!"
Back in
the office I checked the "Statesman Journal" online for an article
about the dead body. The same day a man
drowned in the Clackamas river and that was reported, but nothing about my dead
body.
It wasn't
until the early hours of the next morning when I woke in the dark and pictured
the body that I felt at all creepy about it.
And only for a minute. Mostly I
felt sadness, curiosity, fascination and an odd sense of honor. I felt honored to have been able to witness
this person's end. I felt like I wanted
to extend some sort of respect and dignity to whoever it was. I wanted their life to have mattered in some
way, to someone. I didn't want them to
be forgotten. I'll never forget.
The next
afternoon there was finally a story in the paper. It turns out the body was a man. So much for assuming that only women wear
thongs. He was described as 5' 6"
and 144 pounds. Much smaller than he
appeared while bloated. That explained
the thin limbs. The description said he
had no teeth. Which means he DID have a
head. There was no physical trauma to
the body so homicide was not suspected.
So much was different than what I thought I had observed from only a few
feet away. The police asked for help
identifying him as he did not match any missing person reports. They thought he had been in the water
"for some time." I was
sad. How could you be dead for
"some time," and not have anyone file a missing person report?
By the
next day he had been identified. He was a 28 year old transient. His name was Lole Rubio Zendejas. His family came forward based on the
description and the police were able to get a fingerprint. He had a long rap sheet and had a reputation
for jumping into this same stream to get away from the police. He had been a drug addict.
Many
would probably lose interest at this point.
A homeless druggie, oh well. The
news stories focused on the irony that he had used the stream to evade police. But I thought about his mother, and his
sisters, and his cousin who was quoted in the paper talking about how they had
played as kids. At some point in his
life he had been loved and cared for.
But by the age of 28 he had been given up on. He was homeless; how does that happen unless
your family has given up? His cousin
said that he thought he had been clean for 7 months. What happened? Did he use again and just go for broke and
this is how it ended?
It has
been a week now and I continue to think about him throughout the day. Life is precious in many ways. But it can end
so easily. I place such value on the
lives of those I love, and on my own life.
Safety, health and exercise are priorities to me because I want to care
for my body. I want to live a long
life. I think about how I spend my time
and whether or not I will make a positive contribution to this world. But life can be taken from us so easily.
Our
bodies are just shells that house our spirits for a time. This thing that we groom and dress up and
fuss over is temporary. Under the best
of circumstances it will age, get wrinkly and spotted; flesh will sag and hair
will turn grey. Many are taken before
their bodies deteriorate.
What I
saw in the water was not Lole Rubio Zendejas.
It was just a body. I hope that
his spirit has found some peace and that his family will sense that.
