A sad story I just can’t shake

A passerby found the body of a badly burned man on Rockaway Turnpike in Lawrence at around 2 a.m. last Wednesday morning. He was pronounced dead by the police ambulance medical technician. According to the latest reports, the victim was a homeless man who had tried to stay warm through the freezing night by lighting a fire in a cooking can. His clothes caught fire and he burned to death.

An autopsy will be performed to determine exactly how he died, and then, if his identity is established, attempts will be made to notify his family.

We see these stories once in a while. Something happens to someone out there all alone; way out there, and way alone. Mostly in frigid winter, late at night.

People who, once upon a time, were children, laughing somewhere, with friends, playing games, giggling, sleeping in clean, comfy beds and smiling through sweet dreams, become, after years of God only knows what awful miseries and terrible mistakes, someone just out there and all alone.

Police officers and detectives, firefighters and EMS responders see such people too often. I don’t know how they can stand the sadness. They must, like doctors and nurses, develop emotional calluses like defensive wounds just so they can cope and carry on.

Homelessness, hunger, loneliness and mental illness are global and timeless problems, of course, but our scope of power as mere humans is usually limited to our own neighborhoods. We can’t do much by ourselves about the injustices in the world, random or systemic, or the common chaos of living.

But people suffer from hunger, mental illness, life-destroying addictions, want, debilitating depression, homelessness and criminal victimization right here on Nassau County’s South Shore every day.

Albert Camus, the existential writer, once said, “At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”