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I do not want to drift away from what I want to write although I have no idea what I actually wish to say until I say it.  I am reacting to having heard news in our local small town (pop. 5,000) as I did laundry at the laundromat cafe.  I am thinking about so many invisible people.  I am thinking of those those who have killed and those who have been killed.  I am thinking about how hardships can soften the heart and give a person important perspective about how things COULD be better — and will — when all of us are ready to help this to happen.

I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about how early traumas change physiological development, but rarely do I attend to the ending of life.  I am thinking about my bias that nobody is conceived or born to become a bad person who does evil.  Nobody is born to inevitably suffer from unnecessary traumas in life.  (See:  *NO MATTER WHAT – HAVE NO ENEMY)  Nobody is born to become one of the ‘untouchables’ of our society.  Nobody should ever die completely alone.

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Two weeks ago a woman seemed to disappear in our small town.  A week has now passed since her disappearance was deemed due to a wrongful doing.  A man she used to date kept appearing at her apartment.  When neighbors in the building asked about this lady they were always told, “She went to Tucson to have some dental work done.  I am house sitting for her while she is gone.”

People who knew this woman were suspicious.  She was known to use drugs, but also known to be reasonable about her affairs of life.  She would have told someone she was leaving.  She would not have simply disappeared.

In the end as this man dragged off and sold everything this woman owned an insistent neighbor confronted him with “I am going to call the police.”  The man stole another of the neighbor’s cars and vanished.  Only two kitties were left behind.

(This man is also tied to four recent break-ins and thefts at our local nonprofit thrift store whose proceeds subsidize rent for low income and homeless people.  His son is in prison for murder.)

In the FINAL end a few days ago police entered the apartment looking for clues about this woman’s obvious disappearance.  They found her 3-week dead body in her bathtub.  She was covered with blankets soaked with rug shampoo and other cleaners.  Piles of clothing further hid her carcass from view.

I hate to use the word ‘carcass’ – and yet once this predator was done with his despicable business that is all of her he left behind.  It is up to those who knew her, loved her, cared about her, appreciated her to honor her carcass back from the pit of despair she died in.

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And another woman.  Another woman who was well past her young years, who suffered from schizophrenia, who lived alone in a subsidized apartment, who all of us who live in this area often saw walking and walking and walking and walking — from sunrise until dark — across parking lots, along the shoulders of the highway — always walking and walking and walking.

This woman always wore a coat and winter stocking cap even when the temperatures were over one hundred.  She talked to herself continually.  I never saw her carry a bottle of water.  She walked and walked, up and down the town, back and forth — always and forever alone.

Those who have lived in this town a very long time know that this woman never hurt a living soul.  And yet a week ago a hit-and-run driver bashed her off the shoulder of the highway into a wide, deep wash that runs down from the mountain.

Her autopsy showed being hit and knocked far out of sight where she could not get up did not kill her.  She died when an evening’s rain sent torrents of water down the wash to drown her.

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I wish to honor both the life and the death of these two women in this post.  I wish to honor even the man who is still on the run, having been imprisoned 7 times so far in his life, who came to our town with a warrant for armed robbery in Louisiana, who is suspected though not tried for killing an innocent woman.

I wish to honor whoever it was who hit and ran from the scene causing the death of the innocent woman who drowned.

We are not born to take the animal road through life.  We are not born to suffer from conception, from birth, all the way through childhood so that some survive those horrible attacks of war when they were little — but did not really make it out of their childhood alive — even if their body is walking and walking and walking and walking around.

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Both of my parents survived the wars of their early years.  Both of my parents lived a miserable life and died alone.  I have no reason to suspect that these local people (with the exception of the hit-and-run driver who remains anonymous and shouldn’t be) had any kind of kind beginnings at all.

I honor the SOUL of people.  I honor the fact that people can lose their connection with their soul so that they never find their way back again in their lifetime here on earth.

These tragedies — there is a day coming in the future of our species when lives will not be snuffed out in these manners — whether people be dead when they’re dead from hardship and crime — or be dead while they are still alive — and walking.

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