A Moment of Rememberance


Uncle Boom

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Got this game today and promptly got snarfed by a wolf inside the Dam...

Next life I was doing ok, but ran out of food. Unfamiliar with the game, I staggered toward the direction that I thought was the Lookout... It wasn't, I got turned around. The Temp started dropping at dusk, I was out of food, Calories at Zero. Over Encumbered and Exhausted... I found a knoll and decided I couldn't walk my character anymore. I made my first fire, drank a sip of water, ate a raw venison... Got my bedroll out and my dude says:

"I'm gonna die out here."

...I tucked in and it was curtains.

I didn't expect that line to hit me so hard, "I'm gonna die out here..."...

I thought of last winter, when people found the body of a 22yr old man under a bridge in Bend Oregon, where I lived at the time. He died of exposure, on a bitter night that dipped down to -5, -10. I felt the cold that night cause I walked home from work at Brother Jon's on the Westside... It was so uncomfortable for me that night in my soggy work clothes - I didn't stop to smoke or anything. 2am? COLD...

His story can be imagined, why was he there that night? Didn't he have the basic gear if he was gonna sleep outdoors? Did he plan to die that way?... I believe he wouldn't have been there at all if he had a choice.

I got a little mad, I started thinking "Why don't they vent that steam from the library at ground level - so if someone gets stranded at night, in the winter, they at least wont freeze to death..." I thought of the churches giving out packs, sleeping bags, and tents. I thought about the folks out there who would face nights like this- or ones even colder. Not all of them are Druggies, Not All of them are Derelicts. They are just lost, in the System, in Booze or in Being Lifted, but more often they are Lost in themselves.

I was homeless for 4 months before that kid passed away under that bridge- in those same streets, and I would be homeless from December 21st 2013 til December 2nd 2014. Some of Us Work, Some of us Don't, Some of us Try and Some of Us Can't...

But this is About Him.

This Post is in Remembrance of the Sons and Daughters lost in the Cold Clasp of Nightfall, or the choking grip of the Snow. For the 8 year old boy found in Eldorado NF some years ago sitting under a tree, for the Skeletons Perched still sitting upright in tattered Gore Tex on the slope of that mountain I saw in a documentary... The CDC has tons of accounts from every year, right on their website "Hypothermia Related Deaths"...

Folks Die from the Cold, and I Know they thought this very same thing, I've thought it too - but by Grace, I'm Still Here.

That line made me tear up, it made me remember those nights, it made me remember that young man.

Stay Warm Friends, Have a Happy New Year - Please Remember to Be Good to Yourselves and Each other in Life, It may not be easy- but there are people who may not have died- if Only they had the simple things we take for granted, like a Safe and Warm Place to Sleep.

Don't Waste Such a Precious Gift.

Uncle Boom Loves You.

- - -

“The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe.”

― Jack London, To Build A Fire

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Man, came to read a story about the game, got hit with feels.

I've heard him say that in game once, and never thought twice about it, but thanks to you not only will I think of this post when I hear it again, but I will think about people who may be saying that same thing tonight outside as they sleep under a bridge or on a bench.

Think its time to go buy a bunch of blankets from goodwill and pass them around this weekend. Thank you for the reminder.

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