R.I.P., Smiley

This is a eulogy to a friend of mine who died recently. I know what you expect is some crazy sex shit all the time, but this one's all about death.

You see, I'm not that close with death. You'd think I was, living the life I do, but I'm not. The death of this man took out a major piece of me, like other things do, but in a different way. It was so unexpected, like many deaths are.

James Chambers--better known as “Smiley”--was a panhandler. I knew him pretty well, about as close as someone can get to a panhandler without being a panhandler herself. I do not live in the best neighborhood, and Smiley was on a block very close to my house. One night, he heard gunshots and tried to run from them. He collided into a van, which dragged him thirty feet down the street. Most of his face was scraped off.

When the ambulance came, there was a hospital very nearby that they could have taken him to, but they decided that "since there was no trauma unit there," or that is what they said, that they needed to take him to a hospital that was much further away. Upon arriving at the hospital, he was dead. It is now a few weeks later.

Smiley, as of this writing, still waits in the morgue. He has a lot of friends in this neighborhood, but, like many people on the streets, he was not close to members of his family. The way that the "system" works is that if there is not a blood relative to come and identify him, he will stay in the morgue from thirty to ninety days, after which I believe he will be buried in a pine box in a grave marked only with a number. James Chambers ceases to be a person, or to have ever been a person. He becomes a number.

I know I rarely write anything political or anything close to this in this column, but I'd like to use this as a forum to remember this man, because he was a good man, and after I found out he was dead, way before I knew anything about this morgue shit or anything else, I wrote him this eulogy.

I originally thought that he'd have a funeral like everyone else and that I'd have a chance to read this there, but that’s not happening. This is a man that lived a full life, but things got tough at one point, and then he died, and now he is nothing. Smiley lies cold in a morgue, just like he was cold outside every night, only now he can't say anything to anyone anymore.

Various people in the neighborhood (mostly other homeless people) have tried to find Smiley’s family with no success. I put a rose on the spot where he died. It was gone two hours later. I figure someone probably picked it up to give to a girlfriend. But that's just me.

For the last year and a half of his life, I knew James Chambers because he would hang out outside of the Dunkin Donuts that I went to every night.

The way he died is tragic.

The fact that he's still sitting cold and dead in a morgue is tragic.

Everything is tragic. But here is the eulogy.


You were so fucking beautiful.

I know that we will be together someday.

You seemed to understand me, and you always said that we would be together and that you would take me out.

Now you won't be cold.

Hopefully you'll be happy and warm somewhere.

Far away from these mean Chicago streets that smell like shit and where no one cares.

You will be singing somewhere like you always did with your beautiful angel voice.

One time you told me something that was so beautiful. You said, "This color we are, someday it will all melt away; when we are dead there will be no color anymore."

And now there isn't.

You were so wise and always ready to comfort me with my problems.

You helped me through tons of bad times, and sometimes I'd just drive the streets to find you and talk to you because you always knew what to say.

I wish I could have helped you more.

I wish I lived alone so I could have invited you into my house.

But "could haves" never matter.

I talked about you at my job yesterday and tried to figure out the best place for you to go to get you out of the cold.

Today, I went to Dunkin Donuts ready to tell you information I had found out for you.

But you were never there.

Instead your best friend flagged me down at the gas station and told me what had happened.

I wish I could have helped you as much as you helped me.

You were a friend and a role model.

Like I said, I looked up to how wise you were.

Your name "Smiley" was so fitting because no matter how bad everything got, you would smile.

When everything got worse, you would smile and sing.

You were truly a ray of light inside this dark pit of hell that so many of us live in.

You told me once you were a preacher.

I don't think you ever stopped being one.

I saw you help other people, and everyone that saw you loved you and admired the way that you could deal with the worst by smiling and singing.

You always wanted to help yourself and get off the streets and tell me that you were going to get into programs and help yourself.

I always said that you should do what you can to make yourself happy and tried to help as much as I could.

You were so close, and then this happens.

But isn't that the way that everything goes?

No more cold nights hopefully.

No more world full of shit and roaches.

Continue singing and smiling beautiful man.

I know if you were here now you would hug me and sing to me and tell me to stop crying.

You would say something wise and comfort me.

I will miss you forever.

*

Something happened the day after Smiley died. I went into the Dunkin Donuts where he stood outside of everyday and the woman who worked in there said to me in broken English, “No more one black guy.”

She was referring to Smiley's death. I said, "You mean Smiley? Yeah, it's a shame."

Then she said, "He drunk."

I tried to control myself and explain to her calmly that he was not drunk, he was trying to dodge bullets, and then she explained what I said in her native language to the other man that works in there.

He looked surprised.

It made me very angry that she would just assume he was drunk. I swear I never smelled alcohol on him when I saw him. But even if I did, so what? But he would be regarded as a drunk, and that hurt me even more. And now all of this recent stuff with the morgue is horrible.

I wrote that eulogy when I was in a more optimistic mood; when I thought that he would be buried like everyone else. I better than most people should know that usually good things turn to shit, but for some reason in this case, I did not believe it. R.I.P. James Chambers, a.k.a. Smiley. There are still a lot of people that remember you and care about you.