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I went back to the post office today, walking there for the first time in a month.  It's hard to go when the flowers are gone.

2020 was an odd year, and nothing was normal. The comforting sense of "always" - stores were always open 24 hours a day, shelves were always stocked with essentials, we would always be able to go where we want and do as we please - ended in March.  We were all searching for any small sense of stability.  We were all suffering.  Running a small business during a pandemic is not something anyone expects to do - or at least we didn't, Before.    

I adopted the habit of walking to the post office every monday. It was a silly and inefficient use of my time, but I did it because I wanted to stretch my legs, to get away from the desk for a minute, because no one (except the voice in my head) could tell me not to.  I'd walk out the back door of the shop, jaywalking across the streets that used to go only one way, a long time ago.  Over the spots where the old tracks of the old streetcar used to show through the pavement, over the spots where the new tracks of the new streetcar show through the pavement.  Past St. Joe's Old Cathedral, past the statue of the weeping Jesus.  To the post office across the street from the bombing memorial, where are carved the names of so many we know or knew. 

After the lockdown I began to go more and more often. Eventually it became a daily walk for me.  I knew the route well - less than half a mile.  It was almost a nervous tic, a superstition. A coping mechanism.  I couldn't tend the sick or dying, I couldn't predict the business or when sales would start again, I couldn't answer my employees about how long this would last or what we would do to get through it, but I could stamp envelopes and put them in the mail and know they would get where I wanted them to get. It is a short walk from the downtown location of our auto shops, and the post office downtown is an unassuming little building on the south side of the street across from the memorial. 

I met Bennie there, during the pandemic, when the weather was still nice.  

I don't know how specific your memories of that time are, nor how universally these phases were felt.  We were all in different boats in the same storm.  At this point, somewhere a month or two into the pandemic, the shutdown, a month or two since the Thunder game was cancelled by a doctor rushing onto the court, a month or two since layoffs and business closures and mask mandates.  It felt mean, out there.  At least to me, it felt mean. People were beginning to lose what patience they had, with each other, with themselves, with everyone.  Everyone was scared and being scared makes some people mean.  Just the week before I met Bennie, leaving the same post office downtown, standing on the corner in front of the memorial waiting for a walk signal with two other people, a Karen in a huge Lincoln SUV slowed down in the crosswalk to roll down her window and yell "What are you doing out! I don't see six feet of distance!"  I had seen her in the post office, arguing with the cashier as I dropped my mail in the slot. 

The next week there was a guy outside the post office selling flowers.  It was such a rare sight - I can't describe it, but you might understand it. We had all been so isolated.  This was before courts re-opened, so downtown was still mostly deserted. The people you did see were, like me, rushing around, faces covered, keeping their distance, hopping from building to building, building to car, car to home, as quick as possible. Then out of nowhere, right where there was nothing but the intersection of the government's order and the memorial to the darkest day of the city, there was a friendly, smiling guy in a funny hat selling flowers.  The first time I saw him it made me smile, it was such a pleasant sight, there in that mean world.  Like a micro meadow had grown right in the middle of downtown Oklahoma City. Like that last patch of sunny sky before the wallcloud swallows the world on a tornado day. He probably couldn't see me smile behind the mask. 

Bennie was there almost every day that week.  I had adopted the rushed walk of someone who knows she should be elsewhere, someone whose right to exist in the world depends on her doing more essential tasks.  Finally, on Friday, he called out to me as I rushed by with my usual nod and smile unseen behind the mask. 

"Hey! What's your name!"

"What?" I responded, rather ungraciously.  It had been months since I had been party to an introduction of any kind. 

"What's your name?"

I gave it.  

"You're here a lot, huh?"

"Yeah, I like the walk."

"Got a lot of mail?"

"For the business."

"Well, I'm Bennie.  Want a flower?"

"Sorry, Bennie. I don't have any cash today."

"That's ok. You can take one now and pay me next time you see me."

"Oh, I couldn't do that.  How will I know when I'll see you again?"

"I'm always around."

What an unusual thing to say, in June.  It seemed that, for everyone else, "always" had ended in March.

"Maybe.  I'm always around, too.  Well, nice to meet you, Bennie."

"See you next week!"

Bennie was like that.  He was a cheerful guy. A good salesman, but a terrible businessman.  He was always trying to give me flowers when I didn't have cash. I'd say Bennie, that's no way to run a business, not in this economy. Businesses need every sale they can get.

I think he just wanted people to have flowers. 

Bennie was such a good salesman he convinced this millennial to carry cash. I had never done it habitually, and even less frequently had hard currency on me in the beginning of the pandemic, when cash was refused so many places.  But I almost always had a few dollars on me, so I could buy myself a flower or two on a hard day. 

Bennie wasn't every day at the post office, but he often was, in the good weather.  We would ask each other about business, how many people were in and out. We both saw hope for sales when the courts re-opened, so the law offices were populated again. It meant more traffic.

The pandemic felt less mean after I met Bennie.  I wasn't the only one who knew him. Sometimes he would only have time to wave to me as I rushed in and out with my letters, because he was talking to another customer, another lawyer or businessperson or councilwoman. I wasn't the only one who liked Bennie, who found his predictable presence soothing, who smiled behind their mask at the meadow he created wherever he went in the city.  

Since we were both there at the post office so often, I really think he was the person I saw most frequently during the pandemic, outside of people I work with. I saw him more frequently than my sisters, than my book club, than my bible study group. 

I worried about him during the ice storm in October. None of us had been ready for it, and I never asked him where he stayed when the weather got bad. 

I saw him before Thanksgiving, outside the post office.  It had been a few weeks of bad weather so I wasn't expecting him, but there he was, a floral burst on the sidewalk. 

"Hi! It's been a while."

"It has!"

"Want a flower?"

"I don't have any cash today.  I wasn't expecting to see you."

"You can take one now, and pay me next time you see me. I'm always around."

"You are. Alright, because the blue ones are so pretty today.  Thanks, Bennie!"

Bennie was like that.  Such a good salesman he had convinced me of "always" when, for everyone else, "always" had ended in March.

I walked off, reminding myself to knit a hat to give him when I saw him again. It was going to be a cold winter. 

That was the last time I saw Bennie in person.

I heard of the shooting fairly early that Friday. Local news accounts were sharing events on Twitter as they happened. It was horrifying stuff - an unnamed man, shot on 23rd street, his body left for hours.  The protestors pepper sprayed. The rubber bullets brought out while his blood was still wet on the pavement. Talk of his body being handcuffed as he lay lifeless on the ground.  News stories saying he had appeared dangerous, saying the officers feared for their lives.

Bennie was mentally ill.  I never knew him to be dangerous.  I never had a flicker of an intuition that Bennie was a threat.  He was a sweet guy who sold flowers in the middle of a careworn world. 

I do not know the details of what happened the day he died, the day he bled out in a parking lot so far from the meadow he created downtown.  I saw the video and read the descriptions and it breaks my heart that this beautiful light was extinguished among strangers, terrified.  When you know someone who is experiencing homelessness, you know that things that are harmless in the world of the reliably homed are death sentences hanging sword-like over their heads. The cold, the storms, the dangers that prowl at night, the plague that steals through every street in the city. It is our responsibility to ease these burdens when we are able, not to add to them. 

It is easy to call for more training for the officers (and certainly mental health and crisis intervention training would be a good step).  But why were the police asked to deal with him in the first place? Why have we, as a society, reached the point where the presence of our less fortunate neighbors is interpreted as an assault on ourselves? What if we all committed to learning tools and strategies to help intervene when we see someone in a mental health crisis, like we learn what to do when someone is choking or having a seizure? 

I stopped walking to the post office.  It's a hard thing, to lose a friend, to lose one of the few people you are sure of seeing in this strange world.  I was in his debt when he died.  But I guess there is really no way to repay a man who builds a meadow in the middle of your city.

Eternal rest grant unto Bennie, and may perpetual light shine upon him.