The Little Picture

Philly Future and Young Philly Politics have recently noted that Philadelphia is receiving kudos for its work with the homeless. That is the big picture. Here is a small one.

I work in a city, not as large as Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, but a city nonetheless, and a gritty grimy one at that. I see homeless guys fairly often. A group of people in my office volunteers at a food program twice a month. It is housed as a local church and a number of volunteers rotate through weekly. We pack 128 grocery bags according to a packing list. One week each bag might get 2 cans of corn, 1 jar spaghetti sauce, a package of pasta, a bag of cookies, etc. A couple of guys from the street come in and tear down boxes, unload food from the truck, whatever needs done.

My homeless guy was one of them, a man I sometimes considered the “other man” in my life, not for any romantic attachment, but just for the amount of mental real estate he took up. The bagging crews look after all of the box guys to one extent or another, long underwear in the winter, a used sauce pan when one of them got his own efficiency apartment. This one, though, we all got a little more attached to. It’s hard to say exactly what it was about him. It was obvious that in better days he was a handsome man and even now took care to be clean and neat when he came to work at the church. His vocabulary and speech gave away an education that he would otherwise deny.

Being resourceful I was able to take the tidbits of personal information he let slip to find out that he had once lived a very middle class life. It shouldn’t have mattered that he hadn’t always lived at the bus station but it did. He was a living example of “there but for the grace of God go I.” A job, a family, a college degree, a life not unlike my own, none of these could keep whatever addiction he had at bay. As someone who can’t stay away from carbonated beverages, even on advice of a doctor, I have a hard time looking down too much on someone else’s weakness, especially when he kept it well hidden and didn’t ask for sympathy or place blame anywhere but on himself. There is a history of substance abuse in my family and I find it a useful lie to tell myself that if I have made it this far without succumbing I might escape altogether. Knowing that he was about my age before the wheels really fell off shredded my illusions.

The group from work got together and bought him gift certificates at local pizza joints and diners. I was the advance man, so to speak, checking out the places to make sure they only sold food, not cigarettes or alcohol. Buying things for a homeless guy is different from buying things for regular folks. Gray socks not white so they weren’t recognizable as new. Shoes had to look cheap and be the color of dirt or be pre-distressed to look used. Sixty year old men wandering the streets with shiny new shoes or bright new socks are just asking to be beat up and robbed.

Late this past summer he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and decided to go out on his own terms. You can’t fault him for that. Homeless people don’t have good access to health care and the old and infirm can’t defend themselves well against urban street violence. After the funeral, I contacted his family to tell them what I could of his last year, and that he had spoken warmly of them. In any relationship where one person has all the power, you can’t really ever know how the person in the lesser position views the one who holds all the cards. However, I would like to think that we were, in some way, friends.