Bear

[ConsAreLiars]

A few years ago I was taking a smoke break outside my workplace. A couple guys were walking past and stopped to ask for a smoke. Sure, of course. Maybe some spare change also.

We chatted a bit, introduced ourselves. The big guy said his name was Bear. (Sorry, I forgot the name of his companion who remained in the background.) I first heard "Barry" and asked if that was accurate. He said "No, Bear." I said that fit him perfectly. He was a Native American and a hairy giant, so the name did fit quite well. He said something very complimentary to me. I don't recall the words, but it was just to the effect that we had talked simply as one human to another, something he valued.

He immediately became a man I would always think of as a friend, and a teacher. A couple years later in a conversation with my SO who worked with the city's homeless population I learned he had died. OD probably. Genocide leaves its marks on the survivors. But one thing is sure. We, we the people, lost more with his death than any stock market index will ever measure.

So. I mourn tonight, and offer this brief memory and a few tears as a tribute.

[JeffR]

1. I'm reminded by this why you're one of my favorite DUers

Here's to Bear. And thank you for this post.

[ConsAreLiars]

7. Wow, thanks. And for the rec. I (usually) try tio add something usefu to the DU stewl,

And for some reason I began remembering Bear tonight and thought his memory was worth sharing. Another was Mark. I never met him. But SO worked in a transitional housing facility intended for AIDS-infected and mentally ill homeless and talked of him often. He and she would often go off to get a hamburger at a nearby business. He wore a dress.

And he, like many others, delighted in slipping Lucy the Gentle Pit Bull (working very well as a therapy dog - many stories) a few bits of burger or sharing whatever goodies they had. Doesn't that simple fact say a lot?

She learned a few years later, after moving to another job, that he had died. She cried, and I understood why.

[JeffR]

9. The world is so much richer when people share

Something conservatives simply don't understand.

[TahitiNut]

2. People become immortal when we keep their lives in our hearts - where they touch us.

:thumbsup:

Here's to the Immortals! :toast:

[JeffR]

4. Nicely said, TN

:)

[ConsAreLiars]

5. And that is all we can hope to offer one another.

Some will measure their legacy in gold, but what he gave me, and, hopefully, what he remembered from our brief encounter, was worth more than a pile of paper or colorful rocks.

(edit nearly inevitable typo)

[SeattleGirl]

3. A toast to Bear!

:toast:

[NanceGreggs]

6. Yeah, yeah, yeah ... so off to the Greatest Page with ya ...

... where people might just be reminded that it's the "Bear" among us - and in all of us - who needs to be listened to.

[blueraven95]

8. Bear sounds like a wonderful person!

:hug:

[canadianbeaver]

10. Thank You........lost...but not forgotten!!.

[roguevalley]

11. reminds me of the poem ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls

for me.

[ConsAreLiars]

12. Thanks to all who replied and recommended and understood.

When I had mentioned his name to SO in some casual conversation she, through her vocation, knew him by reputation. I learned he was notorious for getting drunk and fighting and getting jailed, and had become regarded as incorrigible by most of the social service agencies. He was, I guess, badly broken. But I saw him as a strong, spirited, honest and admirable person.

And in some sense, I suppose these two aspects of "who he was" were but two sides of the same coin. What happens to a person who has the qualities I saw in him, but has been forever a member of a despised and deprived underclass? Of course, some may find ways to survive and some even become inspirational leaders, others just give up. But he was a "bear" and he refused to succumb or submit. In a better world he would have been a hero.