He was a dumpster fire of a man. Six foot five, 240 lbs, hair everywhere, and as irascible as they come. People at his work respectfully called him "Big Jim" in public. In private they referred to him as Big Jerk, a much more fitting moniker. In truth, the latter name was still too gentle a term for someone like Jim.

Jim was the kind of guy that would hit your mother and then file an injury claim because the blow hurt his hand.

My first encounter with him was when he was bringing supplies from his employer to our small shop. Our store is a privately owned pet shop where you can buy toys, food, and other pet-stuff from a friendly and knowledgeable staff. We're family owned, and our employees are all part of our extended family. We hire the applicants that love animals more than other applicants. Our staff all have multiple animals, a soft heart for fur-babies, and would probably sacrifice their own life to whisk a street-wandering pet to safety seconds before a bus hit it.

As I recall, it was a Tuesday morning. The day was bright, with temperatures in the low 70s, one or two wispy clouds sliding silently across the sky's canvas as if to say, "Just passing through, nothing to see here, move along."

I had just finished restocking the dog toys display and turned to greet whoever caused the door alarm to emit its requisite announcement. Coming in the door was a large man maneuvering a stack of boxes on a hand truck. He spotted me and yelled, "Where do you want this crap?" to which I responded, "Who are you delivering for?"

His retort was totally unexpected. "Look, I don't have all day. Do you want this crap or not? I've got other deliveries to make."

I was a little taken aback, which means to say that I hadn't encountered that kind of a response from any other delivery driver.

"Let me see your bill of lading, please" was all I could respond.

"Oh right, you're one of those kind, huh?," he answered. "You people think you own the world or something. The planet doesn't run on frickin' paper, pal. You want this stuff or shall I put it back in the truck and go to the next place that doesn't have a dumb idiot working in it?"

A couple of customers were now watching this exchange and seemed either amused or puzzled by what they were witnessing.

I walked over to the guy and looked at the boxes on the hand truck. Sure enough, there was a bill of lading right on top, which I reached out and grabbed, reading it during the return motion.

"You're in the wrong store. You want the bird store in the next block. What did you say your name is?" I inquired, hoping to identify the "who" in my who, what, why, when and where puzzled mind.

"I didn't. I don't have time for this frickin' waste of time," was his answer as he whirled the hand truck around and headed for the door - but not before I saw his work shirt had a patch with the name "Jim" over the place where his heart should be.

Given his mannerisms and general demeanor I concluded that he probably didn't have a heart, but at least I caught his name. The bill of lading had said the shipment was from Seeds Unlimited, a supplier that we have also used in the past.

As he left the store, the door alarm cheerily announced his departure, but the bad feelings from the short exchange lingered. What is it that causes some people to be complete jerks, I wondered? I wasn't sure that the old saying about being "dropped on their head as a child" applied to Jim, but it seemed as plausible an explanation as any other.

I walked out the door in time to watch Jim head down the sidewalk, leaving his small panel truck double-parked outside our store. We're in a small downtown area that was the original center of town when our little community was in its heyday. Now, all the buildings are old, the sidewalks are cracked, the street lamp posts have a green patina from age, and too many of the stores are empty. It's the state of downtown Americana, largely abandoned by suburban migration, and sad. So many lives were lived in downtowns - merchants, shoppers, dogs, cats, birds, apartment - and hotel-dwellers. But now it's just a shadow of the former glory days with sidewalks empty at night, while still retaining a remote resemblance to a downtown that once bustled with life and commerce.

From my vantage point on the sidewalk, I watched as the delivery driver spit on the ground a few times and then tried to plant a kick on a small cat that adroitly sidestepped, the foot missing by a good six inches.

The driver didn't even break stride at the end of the block, stepping off the curb and walking against the lighted "WAIT" on the opposite corner. I thought, well usually the traffic is light this time of day but as I thought that a horn sounded accompanied by the squeal of sudden braking. Jim stopped mid-street and turned to glare at the driver before flipping him off with a scowl and a curse.

Classic jerk, I thought. Wonder if he has any friends?

I was going to learn more about this guy than I wanted to know. In an instant a second car in the oncoming lane hit Jim straight on - boxes, handtruck and humanity suddenly airborne from the impact. The big man landed badly, hitting head first on the pavement. It all happened like a slow-motion movie sequence where everything stands still for a captive moment, frozen in mid-flight, before completing its trajectory.

I yelled into the store that I was leaving for a minute and then ran to the corner. The first driver and the driver of the impacting car were out of their vehicles and looking down at the still man on the pavement as I ran to them.

"Is he breathing?," I asked, thinking about my own first aid training.

Stop the bleeding. Clear the airway. Treat for shock. That's all I could remember. I had never had to use the training and I wasn't exactly sure how to do each step, but I could see that Jim was not breathing and his supine body was rigidly contorted into a grotesque pose.

The first driver kneeled at the victim's head, which was deformed by the unfortunate meeting with the ground. "I don't think so. I think he's dead," came the shaky reply. "Oh my god, what was he thinking? He was walking against the light."

The driver that hit Jim was standing there shaking like a dog in a tick farm. I was sure she was crying, but without tears. Her chest heaved up and down, her head going silently back and forth from side to side, a look of absolute anguish and terror on her face. "Whaaaaattt?," she wailed softly.

I knelt at Jim's head and confirmed that the head landing had done serious damage. Jim's one eye was open but the other had been popped from the socket and was lolling lazily on the side of his cheek, suspended from its umbilical.

He was not breathing. I put my two fingers against his jugular vein but there was no detectable pulse.

This was a quandary I hadn't ever imagined. Here was a perhaps mortally wounded person, not breathing, no pulse, needing immediate triage care but my mind was rebelling. "He got what he deserved," was my first thought. "I'm not doing CPR on this jerk."

I lost track of time. I don't know how long I kneeled by Jim's side. The first driver attempted some kind of CPR move that he must have picked up from 9-1-1 Lone Star or some other show. The lady that hit Jim was now sitting on the ground sobbing. I was frozen; the first time I've ever been immobilized in an emergency.

I heard the sirens before anything else, the aid car and two police cars arriving at practically the same time. The two attendants in the aid car ran to the accident victim, while the police gathered witnesses, me being one.

I was told to stand over on the curb and was soon joined by four other people that had been walking on the street at the time of the accident. One officer had a notepad out and was asking each of us to describe what happened. Two of the "witnesses" said they didn't see what happened, but heard the brakes and looked over in time to see things flying in the air. I recounted what I had seen and the other two witnesses corroborated my account. Both drivers were individually questioned.

While we stood there I noticed that the aid car attendants were shaking their heads signalling that any medical efforts would be wasted. Jim had checked out of his body.

All afternoon I was curious about who Jim really was. All I knew was his name and that he was delivering for Seeds Unlimited. I didn't know where he lived, if he had a wife and kids. Didn't know if he was an atheist, a Muslim, a Christian or the Unabomber, ruling that last one out since crazy ol' Ted Kaczynski had died in prison.

Honestly, most of me really didn't care. The guy had been a class-A jerk, mean-spirited with a downright ugly disposition. But one part of me was curious - what does it take to make someone that irritating?

It all came out at the funeral.

I know. Why was I going to a jerk's funeral anyway? Truth is, I had witnessed his departure from this world and it seemed that he and I were now indelibly tied in some inexplicable corner of the universe dedicated to mutuality. Okay, that thought didn't make much sense to me, either, but that's the best I was able to come up with.

The funeral was held at Golden's Funeral Home on a Saturday afternoon. I parked my car in the lot, walked in, and stopped at the table displaying a few photographs taken during Jim's life, before continuing inside and finding a seat.

No surprise, the place wasn't packed out.

The funeral director made a few comments and then stepped aside as a second conservatively attired man approached the podium. The next 15 minutes answered so many questions that I had struggled with since the accident.

The second man read a eulogy, the basic nuts and bolts of Jim's life on the planet. Like all of us, he was born young and uneducated. He grew up in the next town over, graduated from high school, attended a few years at the Community College, and then joined the Marines. His career in the Marines was short. I found out later that he was mustered out for disobeying orders, for fighting with his fellow Marines, and for killing the captain's pet dog. He was engaged a couple of times but in each case the women bailed before matrimony. He had worked for a string of companies, the long list suggesting that each employment was short. Those were the skeletal bones of existence that framed his life.

The funeral guy asked if anyone wanted to say a few words about the dearly departed. That prompted a long silence with people looking at each other to see if someone would step up. I was that guy.

"I didn't know this man at all. He brought a delivery to my store that was supposed to go to another store and then he left and was in this accident. I've been trying to imagine who he really was because he seemed really irritable for the short time he was in my store. I wondered what kind of life he had led, what he thought or believed, who he really was. I came here today with those questions going through my head. I'm hoping someone will share that with us here."

I walked back to my seat. Silence followed, but then a very thin man, older with grey hair, walked slowly to the podium and began speaking.

"Jim was my nephew. He didn't have a chance. His dad was an abusive type who is in prison for murdering Jim's mother. He was only five when his mom was killed. She was a quiet person that largely kept to herself, fearing the rage of her husband if she talked to other people. After her death, Jim was shuffled from foster home to foster home because none of the rest of the family was in any position to raise a child. I regret that. I was twenty-two at the time and was just finishing college. I didn't have any money and wasn't even sure where I would live when I cleaned out my dorm room after graduation.

"Jim was sexually abused in several foster homes. I tried to visit him occasionally, and mostly he was a sad child. In one visit, I spotted bruises on his arm. When I asked him what happened he said he bumped into the wall. I later found out he had been moved to another home because the foster father had been beating him. He aged out of the foster program at 18 but the system paid for him to go to the local Community College. For those two years he lived with me and my wife, but he killed my wife's cat and was constantly getting into fights. We had to ask him to move when he got his associates degree. He needed help but never seemed to get it. I think he was just mad at life.

"I don't know what society should do about people like my nephew that fall between the cracks, but I do know that he's not the only one that needs help."

And with that, the older man returned to his seat.

One more person came to the podium that day. It was the woman that hit him. She was much more composed then when I saw her on that fateful day, now quietly dressed in a plain, dark dress.

"I didn't know the man but I know people just like him. They're the people who lose so other people can win. They're the ones who get the short end of the straw so the rest of us can have the long straw. They're our children, our aunts and uncles, our neighbors, and the people that live in the homeless encampments around here.

"I blamed him for the accident, but I honestly believe we are all responsible. When we turn a blind eye to abuse, when we fail to uplift but instead try to keep people down, when we cluck and think that we're glad we're not that person - we're guilty. All of us.

"Jim didn't have to have the crappy life he had. He could have been anyone else in this room, with a home and family, a job, a car, plans. All that was taken away from him before he could even taste any of it. For that, I'm terribly sad.

"When some people die they get a grave with a gravestone decorated with flowers on holidays. Their families mourn their passing and honor them each birthday. This man gets a simple grave, probably unadorned, to lie there for eternity, gladly forgotten, his lack of any acknowledgement or honor will be the empty, eternal monument to his life. I might not have been at fault in the accident but I'm at fault for my part in ignoring the people around me that are hurting or being hurt.

"I am stopping today. I will pay for a plot in our local cemetery for Jim, and I will also have a monument placed there in his name that will exhort everyone that reads it to make a difference in someone's life. His life has ended, but not without a legacy. Let the modest actions I am taking cause Jim's life to have had a meaning. He is gone, but he and others like him should never be forgotten."

She walked back and took her seat to stunned silence.

I have thought about the life and death of Jim Faramore for the last year. The man that I thought was one of the angriest, possibly meanest person in town now holds a different place in my mind. And I, well I committed to be a foster parent. My wife and I have two foster kids now, both teenagers that were about to age out of the system. We have committed to love them, to teach them how to love others, and to be a loving family for them. The adoption will be final in two months. We can already see the change in them.

Somewhere I imagine five-year-old Jim smiling - too late, but finally.