Bystander Effect

I saw a dead man on the side walk today.

I was on my way home from running and errand. It was cold out, so cold that I felt myself losing dexterity in my fingers and I could see my breath in front of my face through my mask. I was walking down 3rd avenue back toward my apartment when I happened upon him.

He was pale - paler than I had ever seen a person be. His eyes were open and his mouth was agape. His teeth were crooked. He looked almost surprised. He was lying in a pile of broken glass. These tiny little crystals reflecting light in every direction. There was a shopping cart over turned and full of gorceries sitting on his chest. There was a puddle of blood behind his head. It stained his silver hair, which was otherwise perfectly quaffed. He looked like the kind of painting you see in a museum that sits in the bottom of your stomach and in the background of your dreams for a while after.

I dont know if I am a terrible person for this, but I kept walking. It didnt even hit me that he was dead until I was twenty paces past him, and there had been a woman walking next to me, and I saw the realization dawn on her at the same moment it dawned on me. She looked to me. I looked down. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her pivot, and go back to him. I wanted to go back too, I knew it was the right thing to do, but then what? Call the police? It didnt look like he had been murdered. Call an ambulence? If he is dead and I call the ambulence do I have to pay for it? I cant afford that. The woman who had gone back to him would know what to do. I would mess it up. It was good that she went back. She would have the strength to look at him while she waited for the paramedics or the police, or a preist, or whoever you call when there's a dead man laying on the sidewalk in a pile of broken glass.

He looked okay. I mean, he was dead, but he was wearing a coat, and some warm pants and a sweater. He looked like maybe he had kids. Or a wife. If they knew that I kept walking, would they hate me for it? If they knew that I trusted that someone else would be better at caring for this man until they found out he was gone, if they knew that I assumed that woman would handle it, would they be hurt? For the rest of the walk home I tried to make sense of what I had seen. He was in the middle of the side walk, but somehow he had been pushing a shopping cart of groceries. Or maybe he hadnt and the groceries were seperate from him. He was surrounded by shattered glass but the windows next to him were compltely intact. It looked like he had been beamed there. It made no sense. How was he dead? How was he just dead? I couldnt wrap my brain around it. I had seen dead people before at funerals, but they never looked like him. The closest thing to this that I could remember was Dwight.

Dwight was a homeless man who would hang out by the bus stop closest to my high school. He loved the kids who went to my school. He was the kindest person I had never met. He was a veteran. He would sit by the bus stop every day and wait for us to gather and aks us each how our days were. He would talk to us about school, he would console us if we had failed a test or had been broken up with. I remember one day I was leaving school early to interview for a job with my local radio station and he intercepted me while I was waiting for my uber. When I told him about the job I remember him jumping up and down and dancing around and screaming "ONE OF MY KIDS MADE IT! SHE MADE IT SHE'S GOING TO BE A STAR!"

Dwight died in January of 2020 of hypothermia. His body was found by the bus stop. All of the kids in my highschool pooled their money to arrange a funeral for him at the church near by. I remember that room filled to the brim of sobbing highchoolers, kids who hadnt said a prayer in their life but sat and listened and sang along as the priests and community members prayed for Dwight's soul to rest in peace.

I thought a lot about Dwight as I climbed the stairs to my apartment today. I thought about who would be there for this man's funeral. I thought about who would be there at mine.