Three years ago, I began taking the Baltimore mass transit system to work. There’s a subway station near my house, there’s a light rail stop two blocks from the office that I can see from my sixth floor office. Why drive the Baltimore Beltway, when I can use public transportation? Not only is it the socially responsible choice, it’s also convenient for the working writer; I can write on the train, something I cannot do when driving.<\/p>\n
Take the subway downtown, walk a block, pick up the light rail and take it back out of town. For three years, this has worked for me.<\/p>\n
My transfer point between subway and light rail is State Center. Discharged from the metro into an open plaza, I walk past the State Office Building, cross Howard Street at the light, and pick up the train at the Cultural Center stop.<\/p>\n
At street level, the office building has a parking garage. A guard always stands there at the entrance, and it was always the same guard, a man of indeterminate age between forty-five and sixty, a little heavyset with gray hair and a mustache. Honestly, he looked a bit like James Doohan, circa 1982.<\/p>\n
Even though I didn’t know him or work in his building or park in his garage, I always said hello to him as I walked past the garage’s entrance. On Mondays we might have a brief conversation:<\/p>\n
Me:<\/b> How was your weekend?
\nGuard:<\/b> It was nice. Yours?
\nMe:<\/b> It was excellent!<\/p>\n
The conversation was done. I never even broke stride.<\/p>\n
Fridays were sometimes similar — “I’m so glad it’s Friday!” “You’re telling me!” — and the first time I saw him after Christmas I’d ask how his holiday had been, even though I didn’t know his name, his religion, even if he had a family.<\/p>\n
For the past three weeks, someone else has stood guard at the parking garage entrance. For the first week, I wondered if the regular guard were on vacation. Then I wondered if perhaps he was now working a different shift. I hoped that there was nothing wrong.<\/p>\n
This morning, there was no guard at the entrance. Instead, there were two sheets of paper taped to the “Please Stop” sign inside the entrance. One was a picture of the security guard. The other was a sign printed out on a computer.<\/p>\n
The guard — Sean Kyle — had passed away after a short illness. And his coworkers missed him very much.<\/p>\n
I stood there, reading the sign, feeling a bit numb and deeply sad.<\/p>\n
I didn’t know Sean Kyle. I didn’t know his politics. I didn’t know if he had children or grandchildren. I didn’t even know his name until this morning — and I feel vaguely uncomfortable even using it. I never had a conversation with him that lasted more than five seconds.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, I’m going to miss him, too. He was part of my morning routine. And I’m going to miss that.<\/p>\n
He always seemed so kind. He always had a smile on his face. No matter the weather conditions, he always seemed comfortable. He seemed content<\/i>. He really seemed to me like he was a good person.<\/p>\n
Sleep well, Sean. Second star on the right, and straight on ’til morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three years ago, I began taking the Baltimore mass transit system to work. There’s a subway station near my house, there’s a light rail stop two blocks from the office that I can see from my sixth floor office. Why drive the Baltimore Beltway, when I can use public transportation? Not only is it theContinue reading “On Eulogizing a Man I Didn’t Know”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[424,4093,193],"class_list":["post-5648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-baltimore","tag-life","tag-obituary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}