A Lifeless Body in the Park

While taking my regular weekend hike in my local park, I noticed an emergency vehicle blocking the main trail. From behind the vehicle I noticed two runners in the distance which led me to conclude the trails were closed for a race. My heart sank when an EMT person came up to me and told me to leave immediately and pointed to a dead body on the grass.

Even as a Buddhist, it is a shock for me to come across death so unexpectedly. The body was covered, so I did not know if it was a man or woman, a jogger, a walker, or someone who ran into some unfortunate circumstance. As I turned and walked away, I said a Buddhist prayer for this unknown person who had no idea this was their last day on the planet. Later, a friend emailed me to tell me the body was that of a man shot to death. He was only 44 years old.

Seeing a dead person is a poignant reminder how capricious life can be. We run around all day worrying about this and that with no thought to how important these things are in the scheme of life. What seems like solidified problems disappear in the face of death.

I wonder about this man, his loved ones, and what events happened leading up to his passing. He died on a beautiful grassy knoll, left like a discarded piece of trash. There is still no news about who he was or what the circumstances were surrounding his death. I think about the shock for his loved ones having to deal with a violent death. The surreal gravity of his horrific demise will haunt them for the rest of their lives. He was not the only victim on that grassy knoll yesterday.

The stark picture of him lying motionless on the ground has imprinted a powerful visual in my head. Though I am not a stranger in dealing with death, I am in awe at how unprepared we all are when death coming knocking at our doors (or on our hikes). Conceptually, it is easy to grasp the reality of death. But in actuality, in experiencing the reality of happening upon a corpse while enjoying a sunny August day, I woke up. I woke up to the fact that the universe sends us messages in usual ways.

It has been interesting to discuss about this episode with my friends. The stories they gleaned from my sparse facts are a sign of how easy it is to have biases. Most assumed it was a man, probably homeless, and involved in some drug deal gone bad. Somehow portraying this man as a willing accomplice in his death made it seem reasonable as to why he got shot. But we really do not yet know what happened and maybe we may never know. While the event made me more circumspect, they reacted with fear over my safety when hiking the park. It didn't occur to me to be fearful, only sad that this person died on the lawn of a park with no one there to comfort him in his final minutes.

No one wants to think they will exit this earth without any time to say good bye. No one thinks at 44 years of age they will die on a park lawn. And everyone thinks there still is time.