Linda Shelley Was Found Dead Last Sunday

BlogPress (BP)

Ron Crete
Hamilton, Montana

The body of Linda Shelley was found Sunday by a man out walking.  She had huddled down in a dense clump of willows behind a local grocery store only a block from a 24-hour convenience store.  In fact, in an area I run Tess and many others walk or run their dogs as well.  Any of us could have found her.  Some of her friends and other compassionate persons who knew her had helped her pay some of her monthly bills, rent, etc., but for some reason Linda went for her last walk last Saturday night or a night or two before that and her body gave in to hypothermia as she nested in that harbor of willows.

I followed the story for a few days.  Watched the line or two given to her unusual death on Missoula television and felt the entire community waking up to the simple fact some people go homeless in our backyards and for some human reason cannot be helped out of their solitude or aloneness, preferring to pass up any more of the same life they have been experiencing for too long.  Of course maybe there was a "blip" in her brain that turned off her normal survival instincts and she didn't know what she was doing.  I'm going with the previous conjecture until the police tell us more.  For now, Linda Shelley is dead.

There seems to be a mood that settles over a small town like Hamilton when such, almost paranormal, bad things happen like Linda Shelley's death.  First, there seems to be a rash of odd crimes that show up.  One just now getting court time is a death by a stomp in the belly apparently by a friend or acquaintance who didn't like something the dead guy said about the accused girlfriends hair or some such nonsense.  A political story of an appointed official is another quirk of fate that has our town humming.  A woman who was supposed to be accounting for the county (i.e., County Treasurer, appointee) seems to have missed the opportunity to make the numbers work in a timely manner.  How many numbers can a county 25,000 or so people have to contend with.  Then, a winter settles into Hamilton that might be quite normal on a scale of 100 years, but it happens at a time when there is much acrimony in the community mind about things just generally being a little on the "whacked" side of customary life.  Like I said, a "rash" of misfortune seems to be tripping a wire that causes a chain of actions like a Rube Goldberg contraption and the little burg of Hamilton is in a tizzy.

There is an emotional haze that hovers over our little town right now too.  I'm a poet.  I can feel it.  Does anyone else sense that our normal rotation is a bit out of alignment with Highway 93 where it crosses Main Street?  You know what I mean.  People are thinking about these occurrences they are not used to spending time mentally processing.  It's not as strong as you would feel if the world had warmed up a whole degree on average in a day, but it's the kind of "pulse check" a community doesn't take very often.  We are in the middle of a community mentally checking it's vital signs.  And, to be honest, I sense there is probably much talk over coffee about it going on too.  Maybe, just maybe, we are taking a time-out.  We have gone to our perspective corners and like children gone off the acceptable line of behavior, we Hamilton adults are rechecking our math seeking answers to a few too many things we don't usually pay any attention to.

So, that sense pushed a poem out of me yesterday and I tried to send it to the Ravalli Republic to publish on the Op Ed Page.  They can't publish poems because they can't verify "authorship".  Now that seems to me to be a chink in the armor of reality in itself and a further indication that our world of rapid and mass media is gone a bit out of tune with community conversation.  I emailed it to them.  I would have hand carried it to them and signed the damn thing if they said they had a protocol for such.  No matter.  I'm happy just blogging it today and letting Linda Shelley rest in peace.

Pax Nabisco.

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Ode to Linda Shelley  (1953-2014)

I did not know you.
You have some fame now
Though, and some who still care
Grieve through your strange tragic passing.

We want to know why
You chose the cave
Of willows to hold you
As you passed into deep sleep--

Timelessness-- while we linger
Wondering of your courage.
Were your thoughts so far
From us, your town, more perfect

Than any words of hope or comfort
We offered you in this life? Could
We have been a shelter
That kept you with us a while longer?

You did not take much from us
As you wandered in and out
Of a few lives asking little;
Even durable company, not.

I wonder, were you seeking comfort there?
I know willows and they say
They forever bend to save themselves
From wind or the freezing cold of winter.

Sleep well then, now in your chosen place.
Let us wonder where we did not hear your
Calling out, or see you turning in for the long night.
There, where the wisp of the willow coddled you.

We have now thought deeply of your life.
Cannot imagine it for ourselves.
Yet your inclination to let Nature
Take you in ought to warm us as an ending.