When bad things happen to good people....

We all have our share of bad things happen in our lives. I have seen my share of death. I've experienced the feeling of losing a loved one and a very close friend. One, my father, was at the end of a very long and fulfilling life. The other, my friend Dave, was taken far too soon by AIDS when he was just in his late 20's. Both times hurt like hell and it took me a while to get over the fact that those two great people were no longer physically in my life. But each time, I was surrounded by people who shared that loss and loved me enough to support me through it and so I did.

A couple of weeks ago, a man who was getting case management services though our program passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack. It was a shock to us all because he was someone who would come in every single day, often being the first one here and we all knew him very well. He was "a client". Another man, one who often came with him and lived in the same building, was his close friend. The man who passed away had many friends and family that cared about him. The man who was his friend only had him. These dark days since the man's death have been very hard on his friend. He still comes in but is lost and has no one close to him to support him through this. We reach out to him the best we can but we are "service providers" and its just not the same. He is struggling to make sense of a senseless thing and a loss that has cut him deeply.

These things haunt me. I see people on the street, obviously homeless, each with their own story, alone and it haunts me. How does someone get to a place in their lives where they have no one when there are so many lonely people out there wanting someone? These are good people, people worth knowing. Bad things happen to all of us but when there is no one to see us through those bad times it seems like the bad is amplified a thousand-fold.

This past week our agency participated in the "Count in Time" which is a state wide head count of homeless people in our communities. Groups of volunteers go out in the dead of night, looking in parks, at the lakefront, near the railroad tracks, in empty warehouses, to meet and count the homeless. They take them backpacks with warm clothing, blankets and food. This year the group found 37 people living under bushes, in tent cities and under viaducts between the hours of 3am and 6am and in the dead of winter. I can't fathom that life. I wonder how they survive. And I wonder still why they are there, lonely and alone, in a land of opportunity and wealth. Should make you wonder too.