What Was, What Is

In 2020 I drove by a homeless person while on an errand. He had situated himself on a median ( fittingly called a “refuge island”) at a busy intersection. He had been lying on his side when I passed him. About thirty minutes later I drove past him again but this time two squad cars and an ambulance were on the scene. He had been removed but his meager belongings were left behind. I called the local PD the next day to inquire and was told a homeless person had expired but was not allowed any further details. Two more days went by and while driving past I noticed his belongings had not been removed. I took it upon myself to collect them. He had left behind a plastic bag with the remains of a fast food meal and other refuse, a cup with cigarette butts, a few empty single shot liquor bottles, and an N95 mask. Nothing was written of the incident online or in the newspapers that I could find. It bothered me that, presumably due to his station in life, he had not been mentioned. Not a single word written, not a single word spoken in the media, not a single thought or care given. Nothing.
A human being had passed away in the middle of a highly trafficked intersection on a beautiful Sunday afternoon - and he didn’t matter. Just scooped up and disposed of like so much litter. If he had been a person of note, or a child, or of a different race or creed, would he have been important or sensational enough then to warrant a blurb in any media outlets? It is atrocious that he didn’t matter. But he should have mattered, because we all do. In a nation currently inundated by the ideas, protests, and arguments of equality, how is it that this person and those like him arenot represented? How is it justified that those like him can be judged as unworthy of our attention? This should not be, and so I personally did not let it be.
I recreated the scene in my studio true to life - the concrete median, the traffic sign, and placed his belongings as they were originally, and layed the blood-spattered sign he was lying on just so. In the place of this man I outlined in projected light - his essence - how I remember him lying. An art professor friend of mine asked permission to lie down on this work. There he lay in the soft light, in the cold, meditating for a long while, tears slowly running down his face. Doing as I had, but in a different way. Recognizing that this man was a man, a person like all of us, no better, no worse. We all deserve respect and dignity, not just those of us with a voice that can be heard and be carried beyond ourselves. Sometimes recognition and understanding of a few or even just one person for another can be enough. In this case I hope that it was.