I have been quiet.
I’ve been working diligently to get $O$ setup and in operation. Thank you Tug for continuing with the blog entries in my absence. However, there is a major update to $O$ and I want to start pushing those updates to our website first so that you can use this blog as a source of news and stories from $O$. Eventually we will issue press releases and statements to the media instead of personal statements like this one, but for now a personal statement is more fitting.
I’ll start with a quote like I so often do.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
This is a tale of two cities.
$O$ has been fully open and in operation for one month. In that month we had exactly two people fully complete our surveys. One of those people got married. The other died. First let’s congratulate Derrick on his wedding because that may be the happiest news we get from our first month of operations. Derrick has been a long time friend of mine and part of the inspiration behind me deciding to start $O$. He only did the survey to help out and test the service, so first I want to congratulate him on his wedding and next I want to remove him from the rest of this post. Thank you Derrick and we wish you all the best. It was the best of times.
And it was the worst of times. Christopher Robin Farvour, also a long time friend of mine and also part of the inspiration for $O$, died on October 22, 2019. The cause of his death was a heroin overdose. He was 34 years old. I do not know what happened to his body. I don’t know if his remains were returned to his family. I will make an effort to find out, but in the end Chris is dead and nothing will bring him back.
This is why the mission of $O$ is imperative.
Editor’s note: we were informed that his remains have been returned to his family, and that a memorial will be held, but has not. We have also corrected the date from October 21 to the October 22.
Any of you who have been following the progress of $O$ will know that I have pivoted three times so far since we started. The $O$ staff and volunteers are so used to me pivoting that they probably wouldn’t be surprised if I did it again in this blog entry without telling anyone about it.
This is NOT a pivot. This is a confession.
$O$ isn’t intended to help people. I very much want it to be able to at some point in the future, but right now it isn’t capable of helping very much and in reality, that isn’t the full purpose of $O$. The purpose of $O$ is to record the names of the dead. I almost told Chris that. The last message he sent me was to say that he was dying. I didn’t understand that he meant that he was dying at that exact moment. I had told him, like I tell all of my friends, to call 911 before they call me, which I guess he had done. It was phrased so casually that I didn’t understand that he meant it literally. He said, “Dying, it seems,” and then he died… but I didn’t know that.
What I said was this:
What I meant to say — what I would have said if I had been telling the whole truth — was “In a very real way, $O$ is just a book of the names of the dead.” I didn’t, and he died right after that. That was the last thing I ever said to him, and I pulled the punch, so I am saying it now:
$O$ is the book of the names of the dead.
Please take this moment to say out loud the names of the people you have lost this month. We can’t hear you. We can’t record their names or their information. These people exist in your memory and your memory alone. We cannot eulogize them here, and if we do not survey people we cannot memorialize them at all.
The problem $O$ is facing isn’t homelessness. It’s death.
Yes, we may be able to help people while they are alive, and we will try our level best. We may even be able to lift them out of the situation that they are in, but we will not always succeed. There have been no less than five deaths just this month, many of them from overdoses on opiates. I expect more in the months to come. The ONLY difference between Chris and the other four people is that Chris was surveyed and they were not.
For our first official event, we will collect the names of the people who have died since $O$ has been in operation from our members, volunteers, and staff (whether they were surveyed or not) and display them at our event. After the event we will issue a press release with their names to make sure that it enters into a permanent public archive. We will save the stories of the people who we talk to and on their deaths, if they have not been given a eulogy or an obituary we will tell their stories.
If you would like to have the story of your friend, family member, or loved one included please write to us and we will include their name in the $O$ memorial.
Email: info@S0S.app
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sosnonprofit
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$O$ is not accepting donations at this time. If you would like to donate in the names of those who have died, please instead make those donations to relevant charities, other non-profits, or directly to the families who have lost their loved ones.
