I’ve been bumping into an older bloke for a few years now who would shuffle up to me and ask humbly for spare change. He wore an old but clean suit, his hair was brushed, and although his shoes were badly worn they were always polished. He spoke softly and with a cultivated accent that made me wonder what he had been before he became just another derro on the street. It would not have surprised me to learn that he had been a doctor or a teacher or some other respectable citizen. I felt desperately sorry, not so much for him as for the shame he obviously experienced asking strangers for money.
In recent months though, I have seen his suit become tattered and his shoes had lost their shine. Although he always walked with a bowed head before, it appeared that he had become even more burndened by his lowly status and he would never raise his eyes and even stopped begging.
Yesterday I saw him in the city. He was pushing a walker, wearing filthy smelly tracksuit pants, no shoes, and his hair had not been washed nor brushed for a long time. He had lost a considerable amount of weight, and he was never a big fellow in the first place.
I fear that he is going to die soon.
And I wondered who would mourn this man when he passed.
If he ever had a family, they have obviously disowned him a long time ago. He is not part of any group of street-dwellers, preferring to spend his time alone. I don’t think he has been picked up by any of the outreach workers, as I suspect that his pride is still completely intact and he would find it unbearable to have to admit to being a human failure. His current physical condition also confirms to me that he has no person or welfare body who cares about or for him.
I will probably give him a thought if, in 6 months time I realize that I haven’t seen him for a bit. And I’ll wonder if he’s alive, or decaying under a bridge somewhere. And then I’ll trot off to work, and come home and cook dinner and climb into my warm bed and will probably never think of him again.
Gah.
If there is one thing I want out of this life, is that someone notices and cares when I die.
There are the “fixtures” here in Auckland too. Those who ask for a few coins so they can go get their poison for the day. It’s too bad in life’s rush-rush mode that we’re too damn busy looking after our own interests to care about the rather odd members of our community anymore, and find out more about them so we can help.
Probably because the word “community” out there is a fading concept.
One answer is for us, the living, to pray for those who have died alone.
In this moving and profound passage from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, (Part II, Book VI, Chapter III) Father Zosima tells Alyosha to pray for those who have died alone, unmourned. (Emphasis mine)
Young man, be not forgetful of prayer…Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself, “Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee to-day.” For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God.** And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too!** And God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you! And He will forgive him for your sake.
Um, why don’t you give him a thought now and ask him if it’s okay if you take him to a hospital? You have free health care in Australia, don’t you? Even if you don’t, if someone is desperately sick they have to treat them at the emergency room whether or not they can pay. Or you can give this guy some of your home-cooked food, or offer to take him to a barber.
There’s a lot you can do for this man besides feel sorry for him as you watch him deteriorate.
When I was homeless, I would have very much appreciated someone simply taking the time to speak with me. Appreciation would not have in any way hinged on your willingness/interest in offering up donations and/or other physical resources.
I totally sympathize if you don’t want to get near to him if he smells bad but otherwise you might try a “hello”.
Good points made, there. As continuity eror says, kambuckta – have you asked if there’s any way you can help? If that’s an impossibility – how about contacting some social service, somewhere, and give them a badgering to keep an eye on the fellow?
I hope that, if any of us here were in that situation, that someone would do the same for us.
Look out the window, down upon that street
And gone like a midnight was that man
But I see his six strings laid against that wall
And all his things, they all look so small
I got my fingers crossed on a shooting star
Just like me-just moved on
-The Wallflowers
At the risk of being a jerk, I’ll play devils advocate a little here…
Hell, I’m going to be glad he’s gone. He’s homeless, and very likely does not have a job. He is choosing to be that way. I’m sure I’ll get to hear all the crap about him likely having some sort of mental disorder (which the majority do not) or how he had a crummy hand dealt to him and he just can’t recover. As of right now he is a drain on society. Every night someone probably calls 911 because he is sleeping at a bus stop, taking an emergency crew’s time and resources away from a more emergent need. He is then either taken to an emergency room (drunk tanks don’t exist) and takes up space there. Once he is sober enough to get up and walk away he goes and begs some money. If no one gives him any money then he proceeds to steal what he needs from us, or other homeless people. All the money he is given/steals is spent on alcohol and drugs, which perpetuates his endless plight of being homeless.
Sure, getting back on your feet isn’t easy, but it can be done. Homeless shelters are happy to take you in, you just have to be sober. Period, end of discussion. If you want somewhere to stay, stay clean. There are services for people to get their medications at a reduced cost or even free. Hea, you may have to stand in line for six hours to make it happen, so do it! Day labor is a crummy place to start, but its something. The shelters can arrange for GED classes and vocational education so they can again become productive. Hell, I know a paramedic that five years earlier was homeless and flat broke.
So in short, quit your complaining. There is help out there, and it is their responsibility to take it.
Curious your choice of the word ‘career’. I’ve worked in Downtown Denver for the last six years of so. While there’s an orbiting cluster of panhandlers that come and go, there’s a group that I see, day-in, day-out. When the sign that says ‘lost my purse, trying to get a bus ticket to XXX’ has been in use for a month or so, you begin to think that maybe they’re not looking for a hand-up.
I came to the realization a LONG time ago that if I took every dime I had, and gave it to all the homeless people I encountered, the week after that they’d still be there, and I’d be there with them. I donate to causes that help these people, so at least at that point, I’m helping the ones that want it.
Gotta agree with you there, Unintentionally Blank, about the panhandlers. We don’t see too many of them tho’, in this country. Or probably not as many in the States.
And I’m glad you said:
We have a plethora of help agencies here for the derelicts wandering the streets. It may be their choice, or they could be in such a mental state there is no alternative to the nomadic existence. Society can be a judgemental bitch when it comes to things like housing, healthcare etc.
Yes, there are a lot of people who beg for money who are probably not as bad off as they would wish to appear. But the person in the OP does not seem to fall into that category. The sentiment expressed by kambuckta is most certainly thought provoking.
I’m at the age where I’m transitioning from going to wedding to going to funerals. Sometimes, in looking for the silver lining, I see the mourners and think about how fortunate the deceased was to have had people who care enough to notice and mourn, and how many people out there die and no one notices or cares. I even said as much when I gave a eulogy for my grandmother.
Kambuckta, have you thought about taking him to a McDonald’s (or local equivalent) for a meal and to listen to his stories? I don’t know if I would be noble enough to do this myself, but I would bet it would be a memory that would stick with you for life. For less than $10 you could probably make his month.
There was a case like this in Boston, last winter. In the middle of a bitterly cold January, a 78 year old homeless man was found in a snowbank, frozen to death. It turned out that this guy had been a bum for more than 25 years…his relatives tried many times to help him…but always, the guy returned to the streets. He was also an army veteran of the Korean War.
What can you say? It was a human tragedy, but one that was the sole responsibility of this guy. HE chose his fate…no one knows what personal demons this guy was persued by. But the fact remains, this guy chose his way of life, and nobody is to blame but him.
I disagree with the idea that you always get to choose your life.
In point of fact, I think most of us walk through our daily lives about three moves from checkmate, and never realize how close to the edge of the cliff we really sometimes teeter.
Until some unlucky bastard falls off. Then the rest get to look down their nose and say, “Poor bastard! Too bad he chose to be down there…”
I have seen personally, and also on TV news, people refuse offers of direct help. I’m glad that the homeless you know spring up with tears in their eyes and cap in hand, saying “Bless you squire!” at the offer of help, but the ones in New York are often pretty tough. One guy was practically having a heart attack in the laundromat I was in in a skeezy neighborhood in Cambridge, Mass; when the paramedics came, he insisted on being taken to Mass General. Which is in Boston, another city; hell, another county. Since he had no connection to it they couldn’t take him there, they didn’t have the right to do that when there was an excellent public hospital in Cambridge. To the confusion of the laundromat owner, a lady from Hong Kong who was saying “He’s not right in head! You make him go!” they had to leave him there. They couldn’t take him against his will. The patrols of people in NYC who try to take people inside during dangerously cold weather can’t take them either unless they are obviously unable to protect themselves at all.
So it’s not that simple.
As for the OP–my church had an elaborate funeral for a homeless man from the Columbus Circle area named Patrick. The mike was passed around for his friends and the priests to testify about him. We contributed to a fund to bury him in a real cemetery in NJ rather than Hart Island, NY’s potter’s field. I wasn’t at the funeral, but some people I knew were and he was the subject of a sermon last week. I also often see articles and such on the lives of various homeless when they’re found dead in bad weather in the city.
I think there are two different kinds of homeless/street people.
The street people who beg for money might very well be those people you hear about living in a luxury apartment and driving a Rolls.
The homeless are those who, mental illness or for other reasons, simply have fallen from society.
The guy you are describing sounds a lot like a man I used to help out. Quietly I would stop and say hello every day, give him a dollar and ask how he was. Eventually I found out his name, got him in contact with his daughter and found out he was in an early stage of Alzheimers.
You have to size up the person, like you seem to have done, and determine if they are on the street by choice, or by circumstance.
Sometimes a bag with some extra sweaters and some candy bars are enough.
Sometimes a buck to go get food, or a beer, is fine.
Sometimes, however, you just have to walk on by.
Trite, but “there for the grace of…” sometimes makes you a human being.
I’m currently directing a play called Blues, which is about homeless people, and I did the show also a couple of years ago. To better understand it, a couple of us went to a homeless shelter to talk to the people there.
One man really sticks in my mind. He was divorced, and he had huge alimony payements. Those payments were what was preventing him from getting back on his feet- he couldn’t afford it.
All of you who feel that it is the homeless’ own fault, I strongly urge you to pick up a copy of the script. It really opened up my eyes.
