There[1] was[2] a man[3] and[4] he[5] died[6] today[7].[8]

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[1] “There...”

As opposed to “here”. In this case, “there” serves as a locative adverb, where we are able to point and say, “Look, he is right there.” He is not Here and so he must be There, if he is Anywhere at all.

This word can also be used as either a spatial deixis (“he was in that direction relative to me”) or part of an existential clause (“there was” a man. “There” replaces the nominative “man”). 

Both options assume that we know he exists in the first place.

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[2] “...was…”

The past tense of the verb “to be.” A noun that “is” becomes a noun that “was” through the passage of time. Furthermore, “was” is simple and requires little context – a simple past. Whatever event “was” describes happened exactly that way..

However, “was” can also be part of a “conditional past,” a statement that follows the conjunction “if” and describes something that did not happen; rather, it is a daydream about what might have followed if it had happened. (See what just happened there?) 

Here, “was” becomes part of the Second Conditional, or an “impossible clause.” It describes a situation that could have happened, if a previous condition had been met. But since that condition cannot have been met, being in the past, then the situation that might have happened can never occur.

For example: If he could still see his children, he would be alive today.

It might also take the existential clause as the conditional. “If there were a man…”

But we, the ones who saw him, before and after, know that there was a man, with no uncertainty or existential conditional. 

We also know that time has passed, because “was” is not “is.” 

The man was “is” and now is “was.”

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[3] “...a man...”

Here, at last, the reason this was written. A eulogy for a statistic.

A man. 

Someone, like everyone, with myriad faults and limitless gifts. 

A man buried in debt who took hundreds of pictures of the birds in his yard. 

A man prone to anger who donated his time and his skills to charity. 

A man with a terrible, traumatic past who enjoyed woodworking in the quiet evenings, after his children had gone to bed. 

A living contradiction who deserves to be known, simply because he lived.

A man.

Here, of course, “a” is the indefinite article introducing his presence. A part of speech reserved for the nonspecific. 

A needle. A bus stop. A commuter train.

A life outlined by the indefinite, but not defined by it. 

“The”, however, the definite article, separates the nameless from the named.

In a dark and empty bottle lived the echoes of his life.

Why then, do we call him “a man” and not “the man?” We all know who we are talking about, even if we don’t know his name.

Because, until the very last moment, he does not exist to anyone else. The background of the world still swallows him whole, where definite people in their rote daily lives refuse to see him or hear him or help him. 

Instead, he is melded and welded to constructed hostility, easy to ignore and hard to make useful.

He does it anyway.

He sits near the spikes and on slanted, sectioned benches, and he plans and he waits and he knows that, one day, he will be defined.

But it all feels so far away; he cannot dream forever.

And he will not have to.

The whole town knows him now, after all.

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[4] “...and…”

A conjunction, similar to “if.” However, “and” coordinates: it connects two thoughts of comparable weight, who cohabit a single utterance. 

There was a man and he died today.

His life and his death are equal.

“But” is also a coordinator, connecting two equal, but opposite, thoughts. 

“There was a man but he died today.”

His death overshadows his life, and the two thoughts cancel each other out.

“But” is Newton’s Third Law, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction. 

He forwent his heavy burden, and now we must bear the load.

Equal truths, and opposite.

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[5] “...he…”

He. He, the man. 

No, that’s not right. 

He, a man. 

He is still a background set piece: a non-descript load-bearing tool in disguise.

He is a man turned to vellum, skinned and scrubbed and soaked in urine. Even now, in this tiny epilogue to his life, he is not given a name, just a pronoun.

But what a gift that is! “He” separates him from the broken tents and boarded windows that defined him heretofore. He brings him forward so the audience can see him.

“He” pushes him towards “the” and helps reclaim his humanity.

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[6] “...died…”

The simple past again, of a verb that is never present. 

It’s just a statement of the facts, ma’am; no room for conditionals, no impossible clauses.

“Dead” or “not dead”: you can only ever be one.

And he is dead.

Truthfully, he’d been dead for years, after he lost his wife and his kids and his house and began sleeping in the park near the river, where all manner of wild creatures lived.

He died with that first hit, and he died with every punch thereafter.

And when the hits stopped coming, he continued to die. 

He’d been waking up dead every morning for a very long time. 

But in that last moment, he was alive. Barefoot and filthy and so, so thin. The most substantial part of him was the smell, and that was gone in seconds. 

I don’t think he ever saw us, the way we’d never seen him. He was walking towards something brighter, and he didn’t care if we watched him go. 

And so he walked, and then he stopped. Two actions equal in weight, with no need to balance the scale.

And look at how much agency the act of stopping finally gave him.

He, a man, the man, walked and then he, that man, the specific one at whom we can point, stopped walking. 

He did it suddenly, which is why the temporal deixis at the end of this obituary even exists.

There was a man, and he made a choice, and he died.

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[7] “...today…”

A temporal deixis. Time relative to we who experienced that one moment.

His death happened today. 

Everything else about him is in the past now: his jobs, his pets, his favorite sweaters.

Where he lived and whom he loved.

But his death, that split second shift from “man” to “corpse”—that is still happening. 

It will always be happening.

It plays on repeat in the corner of our minds. 

It haunts the commuter train and the conductor who drove it.

It looms, suffocating and silent, for everyone nearby, who shouted at him or called 9-1-1 or failing that, God;

who heard that panicked, shrieking horn and its one long bleat, begging him to move;

who saw him cry – 

because he stood there on the track and he didn’t move but he cried. 

We all watched him stand there, and then we all watched him die.

It’s a simple-past event, but it’s present. It will always be present. 

This is not a past that can ever be contained.

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[8] “.”

A hard stop, used at the end of a complete thought. It acts as the breath between one utterance and the next. 

Sometimes used interchangeably with a semicolon, but this is wrong. A semicolon separates two clauses that are related. It is a visual separator that the speaker largely ignores. 

There was a man. He died today.

There was a man and he died today; this elegy is his legacy.

And we remember him now because we all deserve a record

of our commas 

and our semicolons 

and our periods 

and our brackets 

and our interrobangs 

and our interrowhimpers 

and our every 

long 

slow 

ellipsis 

eliding us like vowels 

from.one.bullet.point.to.the.next.

And this one is his.