Dear John Doe:
It has been 10 years since I saw you lying under that bridge in South Boston but the image has never left me. We found your stiff body, almost peacefully resigned to its fate lying frozen under a welcome mat; a feeble, and ulitmately futile attempt at keeping warm. Your Stop and Shop carriage was filled with bags of cans and botles and a dirty laceless pair of ladies sneakers were placed in the part of the carriage a child would sit in. the heels were crushed like a pair of bathroom slippers. The biggest surprise came when we saw the Greatest Hits of Barry Manilow album at the bottom under the bags. We all laughed while wondering what that was for. I apologize for laughing but that is just what rescue people are supposed do when faced with death and suffering. It was nothing against you. It was a way for us to distance ourselves from that which we see every single day. We all pretend to be tough guys, but I don’t mind telling you that I shed a few tears in my life.
The dead giveaway was the empty bottle of Listerine lying next to you. My partner, who was a recovering alcoholic himself, says that when you are a prisoner to alcohol, you get it anyway you can. From toothpaste to cough syrup to vanilla extract. I guess they don’t teach you that in EMT school.
Did that bottle make the pain of freezing to death go away? Was living so bad that death was so good? Or did that bottle make you so stupid drunk that you didn’t even know you were dying?
Despite the flashing blue and red and orange lights dancing and painting the walls, no one on the bridge above us even slowed down to see what was happening. This is the city after all. If no one stopped in your death, I wonder if anyone stopped when you were alive. Did anyone care? Did you ever care for anyone else? Tell me what brings a person to the point where they find refuge in the muddy crotch of a bridge where the scent of rodent feces blends with the stench of skin unbathed. Tell me where you were in your mind that a quart of mouthwash tastes better than a warm cup of coffee.
You and I have more in common than you realize. Both of us were once innocent boys. I bet you are close to my age. Neither of us knew what direction the wave of life would take us. But we rode it anyway, and somehow we ended with me in a brown polyester uniform looking down upon you, a frozen man unable to ride the wave any longer.
A million questions and the only one that matters most to me is, just how small is the distance between the path your life took and the path any one of us are taking? How far am I from you, Mr John Doe?