A mutual neighbor found him in his home yesterday morning. Everyone I have spoken to about Thomas Beverly speaks of him with unique and heart filled stories of kinship and compassion, and much guilt over his tragic passing. Jagged memories of my own float along with everyone’s, chunks of ice in a an ever changing river.
Thomas didn’t have many family members in Bristol – either in Tennessee or Virginia. A mutual friend tells me he has a cousin on Vermont Avenue, and I know his wife or ex wife and his daughter live in Washington DC or they did a couple years ago. When he was living, Thomas once told me his brother worked at the William Penn House as a janitor. The coincidence of both his brother and my father and me working at the WPH astounded me. I had to run it by my father because frankly I was not sure he was being truthful. Now I look back at his circumstances, and I cringe thinking about his last days and moments he spent, neglected by neighbors like myself, a city that did not help him, a land lady who criminally neglected him, a power company who could have helped him, and the guilt and sorrow comes again to me in such an overwhelming way.
Thomas Beverly was a black man, a disabled, mobility challenged, obese black man who lived for most of his life in Bristol, Tennessee. He was a neighbor, and he always looked out for his neighbors in a thoughtful way, as best as he could do. Sometimes due to being disabled and often unprotected by clothing and unable to move himself around to help himself with what he needed, it seemed to some of us like he was just looking out for himself. But with the perspective of time, and the sad distance of knowing we will never see him on this Earth again, a different story unravels about his suffering and we all stop for a moment to remark upon the times we spent with him.
Thomas brought out the best of his neighbors, and if we gave him the cold shoulder, that shows that we had nothing but cruelty in that moment. His closest admirer and good friend, was C, a 10 year old boy who did countless errands for Thomas. And when the disability services and food stamps were low, this boy, C, looked out for Thomas, showing C’s giant heart despite his family’s beliefs or the confederate flag hanging as a curtain behind on their window. ? Maybe they will show respect and take it down.
But C rode his bike and his scooter and he ran important errands for Thomas. The rest of us watched with our “busy” lives and our full schedules. A few times, I took Thomas on errands in my Mom’s vehicle. He showed me the exact home of his land lady, and he told me his home was a hazard doomed for eviction, and that he didn’t think he could fair well in public housing. His home is a mess of a place. I should have done something about it then. I don’t know what to do in a world that doesn’t put justice in order when a fire hazard exists in the home of a disabled man.
S was a young woman and a husband and a baby who had formerly lived in the same home as C and she also looked out for Thomas. R who I think was the one to check on Thomas and find him on the last day also looked out for Thomas. Everyone in some way cared for Thomas.
But clearly not enough of us looked out for him with the necessary compassion. On Christmas I went to a church dinner and thought I might bring him a plate. But for some reason I didn’t. We had a lot of oranges on Christmas, and a diabetic, Thomas told me oranges were a special treat for him. He used to call across the street to me and ask me to give him fruit. And I did. But it had been so long. I thought about him for the Christmas oranges, but gave up.
About paw paw season, I had lots of paw paws, and wondered if he might want one. I had once heard him talk drooling about peaches and apples and the fruits that grew on our street long ago, before my family lived here. But the paw paws, he threw them back at me. I don’t know what I did wrong. But I took it too personally, and his overt resistance built into my personal hesitation to help him for a long time.
The last words he said to me was my name. He called out my name from across the street. And I walked on. I had somewhere else to go.
#blacklivesmatter #eviction #rent #nojusticenopeace #compassion