Home

 

It was just before nine when I pulled into the grocery store parking lot and though the sun was out, it was still chilly, 50 degrees or so, I thought. Hardly unpleasant unless you were homeless like the little lady propped up against one of the outside pillars of the grocery store. She was small boned and thin, wearing 2 pairs of trousers, mismatched shoes and wrapped up in a tattered blue blanket that didn’t offer much protection from the cold. She met my eyes as I passed her, offering up a mostly toothless grin and nodding. She could’ve been 30 or 40 or 100 for all I could tell. She wasn’t bothering anyone, wasn’t panhandling or asking for $2 bus fare, just sitting on the concrete, hugging her knees to her frail chest, holding tight to the blue blanket and trying to keep warm. She was still there when I came out with a week’s worth of groceries and without any warning, something about her struck me. I unloaded the cart and returned it to the store then for whatever reason (which I still don’t know), stopped and knelt down beside her, asked her how she was doing and did she need some help. She shook her head and with one scrawny hand reached for the imitation Swarovski crystal on my key chain.

“Pretty,” she said quietly and gave me another one of those toothless smiles.

The only cash I had was a couple of crinkled up dollar bills but I pulled them out of my pocket and pressed them into her hand. She thanked me and asked God to bless me.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” I asked.

She nodded, but there was a faraway look in her eyes and I wasn’t at all sure she was aware of me or herself. A customer from the deli next door appeared and slipped a handful of bills into her hand. She thanked him and asked God to bless him as well. He smiled at us both.

“You take care of yourself,” I told her.

“Where you going?” she asked me and when I said home, she said “Me too.”

As I was driving away, the deli customer re-appeared with a container of coffee and a sweet roll wrapped in a napkin. He put them beside her on the concrete, gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and quickly walked away.

I couldn’t let go of the image of her and her blanket and when I got home, I ran inside for my camera and drove back to the store. She had moved to a wooden bench in front of the deli by then and she looked even smaller and more fragile than before. There was something about her mismatched shoes, one sandal and one regular shoe, that had hooked me.

“Would you mind if I took your picture?” I asked her.

She peered at me intently, at my Nikon, at the Swarovski crystal, over my shoulder into the parking lot. She asked my name and I told her. She looked again at the camera and shrugged.

“Why you want to make my pitcher?” she asked.

“Because I think you’re a beautiful lady,” I said simply and she shrugged again.

I ran into the grocery store to cash a check and when I came out, one of the cashiers was sitting beside her. They were sharing a cigarette and there was something tragically touching about it. The cashier smiled at me and told the little lady to remember, she was off at 2:00. I took my pictures, handed over a half pack of my own cigarettes and a $10 dollar bill. She squeezed my hand, wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and told me she’d be going soon.

“Is it far?” I asked.

“Not as the crow flies,” she said brightly and gave me a wink.

The Prowler

 

It was just after 1:30 in the morning when the dogs began to bark frantically and throw their small bodies against the window. Not sure what the problem was, I came awake slowly and it took a few seconds to realize that the front porch security light had come on. I was thinking stray cat or maybe a hungry raccoon when the pounding started and I understood that this was human noise and not wildlife.

“LET ME IN!” a male voice was yelling urgently, “PLEASE LET ME IN! SOMEONE’S SHOOTING AT ME!”

More fists against the door, the dogs going wild, but no gunfire. I couldn’t see anyone from the window and going to the door was out of the question but I could hear him, alternately yelling and talking to himself, and relentlessly pounding on the door.

“GO AWAY!” I shouted, “I’M CALLING THE POLICE!”

“LET ME IN!” he repeated over and over again, “IT’S NOT SAFE HERE!”

I found my phone and dialed 911, was more or less instantly connected with a police dispatcher who calmly told me to make sure my doors were locked, asked if I was armed, and reassured me that officers were on the way. She would stay on the line with me until they arrived, she said and very gently told me that she knew it seemed like forever but it had actually only been 4 minutes, and just then a pair of police cars pulled up. Even as the officers approached the house, my prowler continued banging on the door and ranting wildly, but thoughtfully stayed right in the center of the security light until the police escorted him off the porch, into handcuffs, and then into the back of the first patrol car.

The dogs were still in a frenzy over all this commotion but I managed to calm them after several minutes and only then did I let myself think about how terrified I’d been. A sudden and almost paralyzing attack of the what if’s soon followed – what if the door had given way, what if he’d had a gun, what if the dogs hadn’t heard him, what if someone actually had been shooting at him and he wasn’t some wild eyed, delusional meth addict having some kind of psychotic episode. One of the officers knocked at the door to make sure I was okay and I quickly realized that all the what ifs didn’t bear thinking about. I let the dogs out briefly, gave them each an extra biscuit, and crawled back into my nest in the love seat and hoped for sleep.

It was, I admit, a long night but morning came as mornings do and life went on. All that was left was the uneasy but faint under taste of my home almost being violated. And I feel like even that will pass.

There is, however, still a melancholy longing for a time when life was simpler, saner, and safer. I fear it will never come again.

Darkness

 

It’s a routine morning as I tend the animals and work on waking up and then with a crash I can almost hear, I remember my friend Marissa took her own life yesterday and the world is suddenly darker.

Marissa. A vibrant, compassionate, gifted musician. A wife. A mother of a 5 year old son and a 3 month old daughter. A home health care nurse and a woman full of faith. How could such a thing have happened and how do you make sense of it? Her devastated and bewildered husband collapses with grief and shock and an entire music community grieves.

By the next morning, a meal train has been established and it goes clear to Thanksgiving.

Her family and his are both local and they step up and in immediately. An absolute torrent of messages of love and support flood social media, offering prayers and play dates and even dog sitting. This was a woman who was not just much loved, but treasured and the idea that such a darkness as overtook her even exists is frightening. That it could be hidden is terrifying.

In less than 24 hours, a Gofundme account has raised over $20,000 and upped their goal to $25,000. A half day later, they’ve made the $25,000 and upped it to $30.000, the day after that to $40,000. I imagine it will be met if not exceeded by the end of the today. The messages on social media continue to mount – they are heartbreaking and it begins to be apparent that this lovely woman touched more lives than you could count. Childhood friends post pictures from school and work and evenings out, happier times that will never be again. How do you tell a little 5 year old boy that his mother is gone for always?

Absent some mitigating factor, it’s about the darkness, an evil and seductive trickster if ever there was one. She wasn’t incurably ill with some disease that would’ve savaged her body and mind and taken her life in the end. There was no chronic, untreatable pain. She wasn’t facing a life of incarceration without hope for release or working through some addiction. And yet, the darkness somehow convinced her that she was a failure and that her husband and babies and family and friends would all be better off without her. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Most of the time, I’m not sure whether or not I believe in God or an afterlife but things like this make me want to, even if it’s nothing more than finding peace.