Fate dealt the hand
Editor, The Commercial:
5 Days Missing, 3 Days Ripe. I do not know if that is my fear, or my destiny. Perhaps it is both.
One hazard of being a part of the Fourth Estate is that it entails handling death, in its many forms and guises. Assuredly, death is as much a part of life as respiration and ingestion. If we are to live, we must breathe, and we must eat. Eventually, we must also die.
Anyone involved in journalism is well aware of this, as they encounter death in its myriad forms as a part of their daily routine, particularly if they work the police beat or the obit desk. An editor is apt to catch both.
I was an editor.
"If it bleeds, it leads." So goes the old dictum of journalism. Not always, but usually.
Unexpected death is particularly noteworthy in the news business, although most deaths are, to a degree, unexpected. Inevitable, to be sure, but not necessarily expected, or not expected at a given time.
With an aging population and a shift in cultural norms, more people are living alone, apart from the family members who once shared their lives and fortunes. Widow, widower, bachelor or spinster, they are no longer a part of some past unit. Castaways, drifters, or abandoned, they are left to fend for themselves, as best they can, as long as they can. If they can.
Such was the case of one man I never knew, though it is possible I had encountered him at some point in our journey through life. I knew of him, though, because of the manner in which he died, as related to me by a friend of mine, his distant neighbor on a rural country road. It was a tale that brought back memories of other similar deaths.
The man lived alone in a trailer and had a sparse social life. From time to time, one or another friend or family or neighbor would check on him, but not real regular. Like him, the trailer was old. Also like him, needed repairs had gone untended. There was a weak spot in the kitchen floor.
One day, or night, the old man was in his kitchen when he stepped on that weak spot, and it gave way beneath him. One leg plunged down, and he had not the strength to extricate it; perhaps a nail nicked an artery -- my friend did not say, perhaps did not know. Anyway, the man was trapped, alone, unable to free himself, unable to get help, with no ears to hear his frantic calls as they grew steadily feebler.
A few days later -- nobody was sure how many -- when he had not been seen for a bit, somebody went to check on him. By then, of course, it was too late ... waaay too late. The term desiccated was not used, but it would have been a closed-casket funeral.
As a former journalist, I am well aware of the litany that accompanies such an account: "He pretty much kept to himself," the neighbors say. "He was always a quiet one." (Or, "We used to see her in her yard/garden/drive ... She always waved.") Nodding acquaintances, no more; not that interested.
Maybe that wasn't by his or her decision. Maybe it was the verdict Fate had handed them.
Whatever.
Maybe it will be my fate as well: 5 days missing, 3 days ripe.
D.H. Ridgway,
Pine Bluff