“Sherry.” You should know that it was Jerry who told me of your death. He stood before me, weak, threatening to topple over. With alarm I realized that he was just this side of a seizure. Quickly I sat him down. The odor of stale beer hung heavy in the small office. His rheumy eyes were sadder than usual. He took the news of your death very personal, seeing his future there.
I sat there speechless, looking for an alternative explanation. You see, your boyfriend came to me just last week saying he was concerned about you, telling me how weak you were. I told him to take you to the hospital. He was reluctant, saying he had taken you twice already and they had refused — in fact, threatening to have you arrested for public intoxication. Knowing such stories are often exaggeration — and sometimes true — and knowing there was no alternative, I quickly came up with a baited plan. If he would go back to camp and call 9-1-1, I would arrange for a bed at the shelter when they cut you loose. My real, hoped-for plan was to have you hospitalized, stabilized, and only then placed at the shelter were we would work with Larry, a great recovery coach with a ton of contacts in the sober community. The best-laid plans …
Jerry was scared. His shoulders pinched painfully together with the knowledge that he wasn’t far behind you. He was so weak that I had to help him stand. He had been hospitalized twice recently, once with pneumonia, and had also been beaten by kids out for a thrill. He agreed to go over to Project Recovery and check himself into detox. After he left, I hit the streets looking for the answers to such tragic news, to somehow understand all this death — to understand this one death of a friend, someone who was not simply a cold statistic to me.
I found them, your friends and boyfriend, huddled together as if trying to give each other comfort — or perhaps circling the wagons for protection from predatory death. They were quiet when I approached and we welcomed each other with downcast eyes. Perhaps we were all shielding our souls from survivor’s guilt. Your boyfriend was struggling to put your death into some kind of perspective. He told me you were in a better place, somewhere where the pain would no longer eat your soul away a little at a time. We shared the horrendous depth that this immeasurable pain had taken each of us to. We then retreated to our own private worlds to process it away from prying eyes while bringing up our last and fondest memories of you.
I see you as you were: A beautiful Native American woman with midnight black hair. Always you had a kind word and a loud laugh for me, but behind your smile your eyes were darkened with sadness. I often wondered where the fine lines of hurt that circled both your eyes came from. Maybe you had a premonition of how things would turn out. Or maybe it was something from your past that chased you into the present. I know that when Dr. J. and I would ask you how you were doing you always said, “fine,” which we both knew was a lie. The streets are buried not only in a sea of lies but also an ocean of falsehoods. I look back fondly now to the times when you and I would walk the cold, early morning streets together in our attempt to find the bridge that would enable us to reach one other beyond all this craziness, to somehow connect.
I will always remember you as you were at Christmas. A kind donation from a Santa Barbara saint allowed me to buy scores of winter jackets. Included in them were a few with faux fur collars. They were of a cheaper quality than the others but you immediately asked for one of them, rather than the warmer, rainproof ones. For weeks after that I never saw you without it on. You looked and acted like a little girl with a new red bicycle. I was glad to see the innocent joy in you come to the forefront. You had a beautiful soul, Sherry, and I hope your boyfriend was right. I hope you are in a better place, one absent of the pain that tore at your soul. I miss you. We all miss you and we are all so sorry how your life’s journey turned out. Our world is a little grayer, a little colder without you in it.
— Ken Williams has been a social worker for the homeless for the last 30 years. He is the author of China White and Shattered Dreams, A Story of the Streets.