His Name Was Jason

September 22, 2018- Featured in Hub City Spokes

As I started the trek with my team down the tiny rabbit trail to the bridge to visit our friend this morning, his smile was all I could see in my mind’s eye.

I was thinking of things he might need what we had in the trunk of the car.

I was thinking of our last visit just a week ago. We chatted about life. We laughed. I shared some food and other essentials with him. We laughed some more.

I gave him my card and told him to call me if there was anything else I could help with before our next visit.

Halfway down the rabbit trail, I noticed an odd smell.

I voiced that to the team and kept walking.

As we made it closer, I began to call out. I looked around and saw no one. My team noticed something in the water.

Something that I had missed on my first glance. “Is that a mannequin?” “I think that’s a body!” “Is that a body?!” I don’t remember what I said at that point. I just remember being horrified.

My mind couldn’t process what I was seeing and what my brain was saying. I quickly looked over the body, checking for all limbs.

I thought if there was just a torso or an arm was gone, maybe it was fake.

I was praying the mannequin theory was correct but the longer I stared, the more I knew I was looking at someone. My team and I were looking at a body of someone we knew, of course we weren’t completely sure at that point. The body had clearly been there for a while and was facedown in the water. We later would find out this was someone we cared about. Someone I saw just a week ago. Someone that was excited about what was on the horizon despite how little he had. He was someone that was happy just to wake up each day.

The 38 year-old we found that day under that bridge was Jason Spencer. His father is Willie. His sister is Landa. He also has a daughter. And a mother. He was loved by everyone he met, from what I can tell. He always had a smile on his face and always said ma’am even though we were the same age. Jason or “Scrappy” as he was called on the street, was the nicest guy I could ever hope to meet.

When he was identified today, it was a moment I felt I had left my body.

The coroner, Butch, walked towards us and something in me shifted. I knew what he was about to tell us was going to hurt.

Willie was standing beside me and as Butch made a direct line around me to him, the words “Sir, I’m sorry. We believe this is your boy” floated through the air in slow motion.

Immediate cries of pain from a grieving father and sister and members of an outreach team that had such a small glimpse of this wonderful man’s life.

I wanted to lay down on the pavement and scream.

The heat, the smell of death in the air, and a confirmed identity of a friend gone too soon. I felt as though I had stepped outside myself.

I can’t say I even wanted to write about what happened. I didn’t. My insides are bruised and aching. But I couldn’t leave the moment without letting someone know a pretty great man died in a tragic accident.

He was loved. He had a family.

And he was homeless, but that small fact is nothing in comparison to everything else that made him Jason Spencer.

His homelessness wasn’t his identity.

No, that is far from the truth about who he was or the family that loved him through every single moment of his life.

He was so much more than a guy without a house.

I need people to understand that we are all humans.

We all do very human things whether our skin is dark or light or somewhere in between, whether we’re rich or poor or somewhere in between.

We have demons that haunt us. We have flaws that tarnish our hopes of perfection, but even so, we matter.

You matter.

Our friend Jason mattered.

I am thankful to have known him. And I know I am one of many that will miss seeing his smiling face.

He was giving. He was kind. He was a guy that visited his elderly grandmother when she was in a convalescent home the last days of her life.

He was someone his family was proud of because his heart was even bigger than his smile.

I am thankful to everyone that has ever done the humble work to make invisible people visible.

We must continue for all of our friends and neighbors like Jason