Losing Hatoon
There was this crazy woman who lived outside the University of Oregon bookstore. She slept under the same blue tarps where she stored all her personal effects. No matter how hot or cold it was, she walked around campus wrapped in layer upon layer of clothing, scraps of cloth and scarves tied around her head like some sort of bizarre turban. Her name was Hatoon.

Hatoon died yesterday while bicycling across an intersection on Franklin against the light. (Read the Daily Emerald account.)

I never knew her personally, but I knew her much in the same way that everyone else did. I've the rumors about her—- that she is an ex-professor, that she was abandoned by her rich family—- but all I really know is that she has been a campus fixture since I came to the UO five years ago and that she has a serious mental disorder. I saw Hatoon almost every day... at the bookstore, in the library, and sometimes in the gym, where she walked on the treadmill without removing a single layer of her clothing cocoon. She was always chattering incessantly at herself or sometimes starting an incomprehensible conversation with an unfortunate student. It's true, she was pretty far gone, but she seemed physically healthy and happy for a 67-year-old homeless woman.

The real irony is that only now that she's dead will people start to realize her value and miss her company. It was a shock to me to bike by her "home" outside the bookstore today and see her possessions gone, and in their place a lonely sign announcing her death and several bouquets strapped to the tree that stood over her bed. I still can't believe she's really dead. It's as if Frog, or the Banjo Guy, or the Radical Wacko who sings Bob Dylan, or Jesus Man or his conservative friend with the dog had died. Wow...it's just... weird and sad.

She supposedly has a daughter (!) but the authorities are having a difficult time locating her or any other family members. If they can't contact anyone, the Bookstore has said that it will finance her funeral. My curiosity makes me feel rude, but I'm considering attending her memorial service just to learn who she really was. I feel like I owe her memory that much.