By his works you can know him, a little. My neighbor and friend Don Gordon was found dead in his apartment Sunday, February 26. His ex-wife found him lying on the floor, near some bottles of prescription medications and a bottle of whiskey.
Suicide? Of course.
I don’t have any photos of Don to show you (he didn’t like them), but I’m sure you’ve seen a few Don Gordons — cranky old hipsters with long, gray beards and long, gray hair. Tired veterans of the life-sucking 60’s, which for Don included army service during Vietnam. He found himself stationed in Germany, where he discovered an interesting talent: He was pretty good at putting together rock and roll bands. Don lost interest in military service, eventually getting a general discharge...they didn’t want an absentee hippy anymore than he wanted them.
Like a lot of veterans of that era, Don soured on governments. Nevertheless, he returned to the US and became an architect, enjoying a successful career for quite a while, until age and health issues forced him into retirement.
When I met Don he was the handyman and gardener at a little San Diego apartment complex I’d just moved into. Like always, Don was pretty good at putting things together, but his peripheral nerve condition made it hard for him to keep his balance, so I helped him with a few minor construction projects, cutting boards and drilling screw holes according to little drawings he’d make on a scrap of paper. He was good at practical architecture, figuring out what materials a project would need, where the loads were, stuff like that. Don and I would cut and drill with Grateful Dead music in the background. It was also nice chatting with Don in his little bohemian 60’s oasis of an apartment, where we’d let conversations wander all over the place while sharing hits on a bottle of whiskey and a joint. I should have done more of that. I’ll miss it.
Despite meager Social Security payments, Don ran behind on his rent, so the landlord eventually posted a 60-day eviction notice next to his door. I didn’t see Don much after that. At one point I saw his daughter visiting, and I thought maybe she would take him in, but nope. A couple weeks later I saw him and he claimed he’d been sick, which made sense to me, since I’d had a long cold, too. Next I heard of him was a couple weeks after that, several days after he’d been found dead. Nobody had bothered to pass around a message about Don.
A lot of us are headed in the same direction as Don Gordon. Is that how we want our country to be? Millions of elderly Americans are dirt poor, often because of medical expenses that drain down whatever savings they had, plus a social safety net that is monumentally, cruelly inadequate. It will corner you, bankrupt you, leave you with no options. Except that last one.
Don Gordon disappeared before I even knew he was dead. The last moment I saw him, he was shuffling back to his little apartment, looking tired and lost. I remember he would sometimes shrug and say, “Hey, that’s just the way it is, man.”
Does it really have to be this way?
Update: I was told the medical examiner declared cause of death to be a heart attack. I have my doubts.