No Obituary. Just an End.
If you’ve been coming here for a while―seven, eight years ago―you may remember how this story started: with a homeless man on our porch, sheltering from a rainstorm; with his cat, Blueberry Panda. I blogged about it here, and here; Caitlin wrote with (as usual) far greater eloquence over on TVO, and was interviewed by Steve Paikin on The Agenda. Back then, the story had no happy ending. It had no ending at all, as Caitlin pointed out. Given the state of the safety nets in this province, such stories generally don’t.
Until they do.
Caitlin came across some administrative trivia the other day, a statement from an office down in Trinidad concerning a dispute over home ownership. Kevin’s death was mentioned in passing, almost an afterthought. We’ve been unable to find any other documentation online: no funeral announcement, no obituary, no condolences or expressions of sympathy. Even fewer people noticed his death than noticed his life.
Caitlin, typically, noticed. And she wrote the following obituary, because nobody else did. Finally the story has an ending. Inevitably, it is not a happy one. But if you’re looking for some kind of silver lining: Blueberry Panda abides. She sleeps on the bed with us every night. She is spoiled rotten.
She is forever Real.
* * *
Obituary for Kevin Videsh Dass
by Caitlin Sweet
I don’t know what his birthday was, but I know he died on April 22, 2024.
I know he was 46 when we met him, in June 2017. So he was 53 when he died.
I don’t know where he died, but I know he was born in Trinidad and moved to Toronto after high school. I know he did a double major at the University of Toronto—philosophy and chemistry. He told us; the internet confirmed it.
I don’t know how he died, but I know he was unwell in all sorts of ways. Schizophrenic—maybe? “Are you taking your meds, Kevin?” “I stopped. They make my head hurt.” Drug addict—almost certainly. The cops our neighbour called on him that first time told us there were crack pipes in the tent we’d given him. We didn’t want to believe this—but then I found crack pipe photos on his Facebook page.
“I want to stop living but then my stomach hurts because I’m hungry and I eat.” He said this in August 2018, nine months after he and his cat Blueberry Panda moved away from our backyard and the ravine beyond it. He was sitting on our porch in the heat, staring dully at nothing. His brown skin looked grey, as it had the night we called the cops, because we had no idea what else to do.
I think that August day was the last time we spoke.
I tracked down his sister when things were at their worst. When we waited for night with gnawing, nauseating dread, knowing he’d rant and sometimes cry (Blueberry there with him, huddled close). It had started out so innocuously, in June 2017, when he’d sung along with Madonna and Whitney Houston. Just an exuberant, slightly off guy who’d chosen our ravine to live in with his cat after being evicted from his apartment. By November, he was incoherent, shouting about demons. Setting fires.
Over Facebook Messenger, his sister told me how hard she’d tried. How many plane tickets she’d bought so he could visit her in Boston, only to have him not show up. How many times she’d set up appointments for him (medical; psychiatric), only to have him not show up. She told me how exhausted she was. How hopeless. When I let her know we’d gotten him into the Bethlehem United shelter with Blueberry, she thanked me, then asked for his case worker’s name, then blocked me.
I know his mental health fell off a cliff after his mother, whom he loved dearly, died in 2010. I know he loathed his father—said he was a homophobe, cruel, angry. I know, again thanks to Facebook, that Kevin’s relationship with his sister disintegrated after their mother died, and he got sick. Or sicker.
Blueberry Panda is what I know best about him. Blueberry, the mustachioed tuxedo cat he found crying under his apartment window when she was small enough to fit in his hand, and who was with him until she was eight years old, and a chonk. She burrowed deep into his sleeping bag with him, when he lived up against our back fence, and later, when he lived in our backyard.
January 14, 2018
What is real is Me and Blueberry Panda, and not anything else at all ever, this whole “people” “life” thing is a video, and all people just do the same moves over and over, and it cannot be changed, I have tried, and “people” and “life” SIMPLY ARE NOT REAL ever, just a video, like a programming, which they cannot alter from, except for Blueberry Panda who is forever real, and I have something better than “life”.
He’d already lost her when he wrote that.
He showed up at our door on January 6, 2018. He sat in our living room, talking in a monotone—a long, low drone of words that mostly didn’t go together. “I lost Blueberry Panda, but I know where she is.” “Where is she, Kevin? Is she dead?” “No. I know where she is. I just can’t tell you. I lost her by the altar. I know she’s safe.” “When did you leave Bethlehem United?” “After five weeks.” “Why?” “People were doing drugs there. It wasn’t clean.”
He told us about his “gift”, that night: his ability to remember previous events as they were happening again, in the present. “I remember this now,” he said. “You were here before”—gesturing at Peter—“but you weren’t.” Gesturing at me. Frowning.
After an hour, and a glass of orange juice, he went back out into the cold. We didn’t give him money. We’d stopped doing that, despite the guilt.
Two days later, I couldn’t concentrate at work, imagining Blueberry dead or lost. No black-and-white cat on the City of Toronto deceased animals website, though. No black-and-white cat listed as found at the Humane Society, or on other lost and found cats sites.
“I lost her by the altar.”
Homeless shelter church Toronto, I typed—and there it was: a warming centre in a church at Dundas and Sherbourne. I think I remember my hands shaking as I dialed their number.
“We do have a cat, yes. She’s been here since December; we were hoping her person would come back for her. We just called Toronto Animal Services today; they’re on their way to pick her up.”
We picked her up.
Kevin showed up on our porch at least twice after Blueberry came to live with us, on January 8, 2018. We didn’t tell him we had her. We had to save her if we couldn’t save him. Right? It was the only sensible thing.
“I want to stop living but then my stomach hurts because I’m hungry and I eat.” She was inside when he said that. Imagine his face, if he’d seen her. If we’d said, “Here she is, Kevin. We found her, but she belongs with you.”
Would this have saved him?
No.
Just the guilt talking. Right?
I checked online for references to him, in the years after we last saw him. (He was standing on the bridge from the subway to the park near our house, that last time. Winter 2020 or 2021; he was rocking gently, eyes on his feet. I walked past with my hood pulled over my face. Guilt, sadness, dread, guilt, sadness, dread; hurry home to curl up around Blueberry.) Nothing…nothing…then, at last:
LETTERS OF ADMINISTRATION of the estate of KEVIN VIDESH DASS of 28, Immortelle Avenue, Coconut Drive, San Fernando, Trinidad, who died on the 22nd day of April, 2024, by Cummings Dass of the same place, his father and only person entitled to the estate…
Kevin’s father is seeking ownership of the house in Trinidad that he lost in his divorce from Kevin’s mother. The father Kevin loathed is the reason I know he’s dead.
Kevin Videsh Dass: Month/day unknown, 1971(?)-April 22, 2024.
October 23, 2016
AND I BELIEVE THAT HEAVEN IS FULL OF TREES AND SHRUBBERY THAT HAVE DARK DARK GREEN AND BLUE LEAVES (BLUE ON THE TIPS OF THE LEAVES), AND TREES WITH DARK GREEN AND RED LEAVES (RED ON THE TIPS OF THE LEAVES). AND I BELIEVE HEAVEN HAS LOTS OF STREAMS AND LAKES AND WATERFALLS AND BEACHES THAT ALL GLISTEN IN A SOFT, GLOWY TRANSLUCENCE. AND I BELIEVE THAT IN HEAVEN, I CAN REACH UP MY HAND TO THE SKY AND PICK A STAR RIGHT OUT OF THE SKY, AND HOLD IT IN MY HANDS, AND ADORE IT, AND I BELIEVE THAT I CAN BRING THE STAR HOME WITH ME. AND I BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE MANY, MANY BEAUTIFUL UNICORNS IN HEAVEN AND I BELIEVE THAT ALL THE UNICORNS CAN TALK TO THE GOOD PEOPLE AND/OR BEINGS JUST LIKE I TALK TO MY CAT, BLUEBERRY PANDA.
This is beautiful and so sad. Schizophrenia is a scourge.
Heartbreaking, and beautiful. Thank you, Caitlin, for giving him an obituary when nobody else would. Sending you both my love.
Oof. Rest in Power, Kevin. I dunno how schyzophrenia looks like – but psychosis & crack ain’t no joke, and I speak from experience (dw, t’s been a long time since then.
Take care, Peter.
Ang God most certainly exists, but let’s agree to disagree.
Wow. I’m glad Blueberry Panda is still in the picture. What a story. What a tragedy.
(you can publish my first comment, Peter, dw about me, it’s already very easy to doxx me)
And yes, just the guilt talking, absolutely no doubt about that.
❤️
A beautiful obituary. I’m so sorry.
Caitlin, a noble gesture. I make free to speak for Kevin when I say, ‘Thank you for caring.’
I remember reading the local news a few years ago (Buffalo area) and seeing a picture of a homeless man who had frozen in the brutal winter. There was no name or obituary attached. I can’t help but despair at how many lives have ended this way, how many people have had their names last spoken by the mortician.
Thank you for both for giving this man some vestige of dignity in a world too callous to spare any.
Hell, I think I posted the same thing twice.
Comments from new posters go into moderation. You probably thought the system had eaten your comment when you first posted, and tried again?
Yes, that’s definitely it.
There’s an old news article on a Buffalo website that contains nothing but a title along the line of ‘Man Found Frozen in Winter Storm’ and a picture of a homeless man curled up in deathly slumber. I’m haunted by the thought of how many people have met this terrible, anonymous fate because our systems couldn’t support them or didn’t care to. Nobody’s name should die on the mortician’s tongue.
I’ve read through all of your Kevin-related posts tonight and can only admire the kindness you both have shown. The world eats away at our compassion; it takes boundless strength to push through that bitterness.
Thank you for sharing his name and story, and for treating him with the dignity that the world didn’t want to provide.
I followed that here, back in the day. Sad state of affairs then, and I guess that this ending was, if not inevitable, then at least the most likely.
But you both were and are stand-up people. That is too rare by a long stretch. Thank you.
Yeah, well, we all of us get dropped off the deep end and we struggle and churn and tread water until we all inevitably drown alone, our cries lost in the void, barely remembered for like fifteen seconds by whoever was drowning nearby; no hope, no escape, just the hungry maw of the patient abyss and our personal demons we happened to pick up along the way.
Post more cats.
.
Is he hooked on tying women to railroad tracks by any chance?
That may be misinterpreted by literalists. I was referring to your cat’s Snidely Whiplash moustache (Rocky & Bullwinkle). At least that is what I see on my end.
Ah. I was wondering. Maybe part of the confusion is, Blubbery Panda is a “she”.
She does have a villainous side, admittedly…
My dearly departed cat liked to scoot across my ankles when I took the stairs. A good epitaph for him would be “As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”
I am waiting for Martha Wells to write the Murder Cat series.
Lies! Deception! That cat was framed, i tell you! She is the very picture of innocence.
The only deception is that photoshopped moustache.
Man, i dont know what to say, except that i am dead-sure you did the right thing regarding the cat.
As for Kevin, that poor fucker. Terrifying to know that people can just become unglued like that due to a faulty brain. I remember reading about him on this blog years(?) ago.
Also, despite your protestations and your self-proclaimed misanthropic bent, i am always astounded by your and your wifes empathy and moral fibre. If more people were like you two, we as species wouldnt be so fucked.
Very poignant and well written. We humans sure are something.
Kobayashi Maru, Peter. There is no “good” way to deal with another human’s mental illness and/or addiction. You can help him up when he falls down, but he has to want to stay standing, by and for himself.
You showed kindness, protected those you could protect, and still ask yourself “Could I have done more?” With his own brain in on the conspiracy to fuck him up, really, no.
Many, many decades ago, when I was crashing out of premed a second time (because I was extra stupid and a very poor learner), our year tutor told my folks there was nothing they could do except stand well back and let me fail. (I was told this some years later.) And she was right: I’d have ripped the head of anyone who got between me and the dear lie my distorted brain was hanging onto. Doing nothing while I learned for myself how to fail was a thoroughly shit solution; but it was a solution.
I have given close people many nightmares; that’s on my conscience. Don’t beat yourself up for keeping yourself safe from others’ monsters, when the only “good” solution is not to add to them.
I really admire you and Caitlin for your concern, kindness and generosity towards somebody who really needed help.
This blog has an above-average number of heart-wrenching beautiful posts. Thank you for sharing.
Makes me think of all the stories like this one we never hear anything about because no one knows them to share or there’s no easy way to find them if shared, and then they’re lost.
Thank you for sharing this.
We are ghosts, here today, gone tomorrow.
Feels like that some days, at least.
This was very beautifully written. I’m sorry that Kevin has passed. I’ve had some friends and family members who have struggled with mental illness, and it is never easy even under the best of circumstances. It sounds as if the two of you did a lot more to help him than most of the other people in his life.