Another Zoner gone... Dr. Sac(CrowRAP)

I am very sad to post that one of our Philzone Hep C zoners has died. His name was Bob and he posted as Dr. Sac (CrowRAP). Among other things I can remember, he posted that his insurance company was unwilling to pay for Harvoni and that a specialty pharmacy was trying to get meds on his behalf. He never got them.

We emailed for a while in 2016 and he was a deep thinker, smart, gentle, funny and compassionate. He handwrote to me mid-January of this year, but I didn't write back til sometime in April. I heard last week from the woman he'd been with for the last 17 years that he died on March 15th, the result of a tumor on his brainstem. He survived a surgery which removed part of the tumor but it grew back quickly.

He didn't post often and considered himself a little thin-skinned and not quick-witted enough for the Zone and though he registered for Viva he never posted. He was a really lovely man and his death makes me really sad.

His partner sent this poem, along with a photo of him at Joshua Tree State Park. The poem had been on his fridge.

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

It was like this:

you were happy, then you were sad,

then happy again, then not.

It went on.

You were innocent or you were guilty.

Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.

Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—

between you, there is nothing to forgive—

but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Jane Hirschfield