Observations From A Grieving Neighbor

I have more questions than answers this morning as I ponder the death of Shawn Daugherty. I know his name because it was reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch but I have no other details about who he was as a human being. But a human being he was, even as he is described as “body parts” and “human remains” in local media.

The Good Samaritan is a character from a parable told by a Nazarene man over 2000 years ago but he resonates with me this morning. He makes me wonder, who is my neighbor? I am thinking about this because of how the tragic death of a young man is affecting my community this morning. It would be easy to dismiss Shawn as just another headline except that my heart is too tender for that. He is someone’s son, someone’s brother, maybe even someone’s father, and he is gone from this world forever while the gruesome details of his passing circulate through local media like a Carnival freak show.

I waited for over an hour Thursday evening for my mother to return my children while she sat in traffic on the highway. We were attentive to the time because I was eager to take my son to junior high registration at his school where I planned to meet up with a friend from work. An incident had closed the road and cars were not moving. I finally decided to check traffic reports in order to determine how long it would take her to get to my house when I found a caption that took my breath away. “Traffic Diverted as Officers investigate Body Parts on Highway.” As I read the story aloud to my mother, she gasped and began to cry. “I saw that this morning. I drove past it on my way to get my haircut.” “This morning” was 7 hours before local authorities noticed anything was awry. I was horrified and angry. Where were the police? Why didn’t they do something? And then I considered the other drivers like my mother, people in a hurry to get somewhere, people with other things on their minds, thousands of people who drove past the human being on the road and did nothing.

To their defense, many thought it was an animal. After all, the horror was too great to consider otherwise. But as I read the local paper this morning and learned that people had reported a man on the highway at 2:15am, my heart swelled with the injustice of it and I began to get very, very angry. But who was I to be angry at? If I had perchance driven that road yesterday morning, would I have not done the same thing? I have a job to get to, important commitments to keep. I like to think I would have seen what happened and called authorities immediately, but what if I hadn’t? Thousands of people in St. Louis today are pondering this question…”why didn’t I do something?”

My next reaction was to be very angry at the police. On my drive to the junior high school I saw no less than 3 police cars driving or sitting in parking lots. Surely they drove that stretch of road at least once yesterday morning. Why didn’t they do something? My uncle is a Missouri state trooper and I know he stops to make roadways safe when animals fall as innocent victims to our vehicular haste. Why didn’t someone, anyone, at least stop to make the roadway safe?

I then reflected on my neighborhood and the people who live there. I thought of my neighbor who has lived in her home for 7 years and had not once spoken to another neighbor across the street. When I first encountered her over a month ago, she expressed to me her deep loneliness and longing for friends. I have since spent a great deal of time with her and come to love her very much. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to live somewhere and not speak to or acknowledge the people who live within a few feet of my home. And yet several of my other neighbors have brushed me off with very curt replies when I greet them. What I have discovered is that people have very different opinions and feelings about neighbors. I thought about the man who lived next to me at my old house. His name was Mr. Danzinger and he died alone—an introvert, a recluse. No one knew he was dead because he made a practice of speaking to no one. I had tried to knock on his door multiple times but he never answered. The police had to break down his door to find his body. He was my neighbor.

Shawn was my neighbor too, even though I did not know him. I grieve his passing just the same. Not because of the circumstances of his death, but because his life had value. He loved and was loved. And now his story has concluded. This morning I couldn’t help but think of his family and pray for them. Because of him, I resolved anew to continue to reach out to the people that live close to me in order to know them better. I long to hear their stories and share their lives. Maybe they have something to teach me. Maybe I can help them. Whatever the case may be, we are all human beings walking through life and facing challenges and experiencing joys. And aren’t those experiences more rich when we share them together? Together we bind up hurts. Together we laugh and love. That is what community should do. People should share their lives. Loneliness and pain are rampant in this world, but I believe there is a cure!

Time is short. Life is precious. We never know which moment will be our last. Today, if you are reading this, I encourage you to be a good neighbor.