Susan Dix Lyons: Grave Digging

It’s a short walk from the Civic Center in San Francisco to see some of the best and the worst of our community. Susan Dix Lyons has this Perspective.

This morning I saw a man digging his own grave by the side of the road. I was rounding the curve at the exit for 80 East off of Van Ness. I couldn’t tell if he was using his bare hands or some sort of makeshift shovel, but there he was standing knee-deep in the hole as the gray sky hovered, a clump of dirt slinging from his side.

I don’t know for sure, of course, if it was his grave he was digging there on a weekday morning, but it was the size and shape of a body, even though it seemed like the worst place in the world to lay to rest.

Just a few blocks away was San Francisco’s Civic Center, standing tall in all of its Beaux Arts glory, its gold-leafed dome and storied theaters offering so much proof of hope and beauty. Just a few blocks away was the Tenderloin, and Eddy Street, a place that looks more like the apocalypse than any place I’ve been on this earth — so many lost souls with faraway eyes clustered and shuffling and scratching and buying whatever it is they feel they need to stay alive in this world.

The greatest of the city’s wonders side-by-side with its greatest miscarriage of humanity.

People die on these streets in broad daylight — an average of two a day. Twice as many died during the pandemic as in prior years. We who live or work here know this. It’s impossible not to know this. I have walked down Turk Street and seen school-age children having to weave around people passed out in a state that suggests God has no mercy. I’ve watched teenage boys leaving football practice by Jefferson Square Park as they’ve skirted zoned-out bodies as common as fire hydrants.

They are all equally precious and equally worthy residents of this city. But somehow — despite attempts to address the problems — we’ve come to tolerate human suffering on an operatic scale. It twists my heart and makes me mad, and yet – this morning I drove past City Hall admiring its architecture and grandeur, and then I saw a man who seemed to be digging his own grave by the side of the road, and I drove past him too.

With a Perspective, I’m Susan Dix Lyons.

Susan Dix Lyons is a nonprofit founder and doctoral student who lives in San Francisco and Angwin.