I believe I may seen a man die today on the corner of 40th and Market. I was walking to the El and saw a crowd of people standing around watching an EMT desperately pumping on a man’s chest. I went over to one of the onlookers and he told me that the man had collapsed in front of a nearby Daycare Center. Some people had helped him back up and the man said that he was fine but he barely made it across the street before he collapsed again. At that point, everyone figured it was a heart attack.

By the time I turned the corner towards the El, an EMT was frantically pounding on his chest, trying to reawaken the man’s once beating heart. They had apparently already used paddles to shock him alive, but he still lay there and the EMT kept on pounding. After they loaded him or his body into the ambulance, another man came over and told us that the man was dead, that when they shocked him his body seized up with the electricity but his eyes looked hollow, fixed on the same blank point off in the distance. “That man’s dead, he’s with God now! It doesn’t take more than a second, when He calls you that’s it!” We just shook our heads. “It’s a damn shame.”

When they pulled the man off the ground, the EMT was still pumping on his chest, pausing only so they could place the body onto a gurney. I couldn’t tell you if there was still any hope left that he’d come back, or if the EMT was simply persisting for show or for ritual. I suppose, there’s still some slim chance the man may yet be alive, fighting for his life in some hospital somewhere but even still, it seems that in all likelihood that man died on the corner of 40th and Market today and we were all standing by him when he passed.

Now I can make no claims to know anything more about him than what I experienced for about 10 minutes this morning, I don’t know whether or not he was good man or a bad man, whether he went to church or had a wife, or even if I would’ve thought to talk to him if I had seen him alive and well on that same street corner. And yet, he is one of us, a part of what we are, and today he may have gone from this life just as we all one day will go. I offer all respect to his life as I offer respect to that life that courses through all of us.

Death is a hard thing but it is also nothing at all, just a change of seasons. The only real meaning that I can see in death is the necessity to make meaning in life, to appreciate it and to appreciate those you share it with. If I did watch that man die today, I know that he died surrounded by people who in that instance appreciated him, who knowing nothing about him, wanted more than anything for him to pull through, for him to wake up and to be alright. Those people will remember him, and will talk about the time they spent with him as I’m doing right now. As heavy as this shit may be, it is a blessing that he did not die alone and it is a blessing that his life and passing will not be soon forgotten. For those of us who happened upon him this morning, the corner of 40th and Market will bear a new significance and the worn streets of this city will swell with the holy weight of yet another ghost.

To that man, body, or ghost, I wish you all my respect and my love. May your way before you be blessed and may peace be upon you always.

germ ross.