Sandwich, in memoriam: 2010 - 2010
Sandwich is gone.
On the eve of Christmas Day, Kate and I arrived in Berkeley after a week’s vacation. Our walk home took us by Sandwich’s favorite haunt, and it was with great trepidation that I approached our familiar phone booth. I hadn’t checked on Sandwich in over a week, the longest we have been apart since we first met all those months ago.
Kate and I rounded the corner, and we were met by a scene whose subtle violence would be lost on any other passersby.
But not lost on us.
Sandwich was gone, wrenched from the bosom of his phone booth. His friends, napkins and orange peels alike, were gone as well. Scattered across the sidewalk, all that remained was a tiny scrap of a withered orange peel and a sodden mess of a napkin, wrecked by the week’s rain. Nary a trace of Sandwich himself remained.
Gone.
Rationality has no place here. I am distraught over the loss of Sandwich, as though I have lost a true friend. Sandwich is the first, and perhaps only, thing unique to the Bay Area that I have learned to love and embrace for what it is. Without Sandwich this is just another busy, noisy, dirty husk of an urban landscape, cast in concrete and devoid of meaning.
I hate it here, without Sandwich.
But such thoughts will lead only to mental ruin. We must celebrate all that Sandwich has given us, his unconditional love and acceptance, in his brief time on this earth. He lived a long and full life for a sandwich, and even with the odds so stacked against him, he persevered.
Not many sandwiches can claim six hard months living on the streets.
But Sandwich can.
Indeed, we can only hope that simply on account of knowing him, there is a little bit of Sandwich in all of us.
Thank you, Sandwich, for befriending me, inspiring me, challenging me, but most of all, for showing me how to live.
