Bob Dreizler's Resources: Death of a Homeless Friend
Death of A Homeless Friend
Through my second floor office window I regularly see homeless men and women walking along H Street. When I'm down on the streets of Midtown I usually avoid eye contact when one of them prepares to ask me for change, but some days I'll say "hello" and give one of them a quarter or even a dollar. Some days I'm able to look through the dirt and see the face of a person who might once have been my friend - someone like Bill.
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I was visiting my family in Redondo Beach a few years ago Thanksgiving when my mother silently handed me the local newspaper, folded over to the obituary section. A familiar name leaped out at me; Bill was dead.
I would not have recognized him from the two paragraph synopsis of his life. Bill's obituary was different from the others. No mention was made of how he died and no services were scheduled. He had been homeless or transient for many years
.Late in high school and early in college, Bill and I became close friends. He was sort of crazy then, but just marginally crazier then my other friends and me.
Bill didn't evolve in to Hippiedom like the rest of us. He joined the Army and was sent to Germany where he became a Military Policeman. I could never envision that image. Some people thought that he would benefit from the structure of military life, but I had my doubts. Bill was a free spirit. At times his spirit was a little too free, too mischievous for my cautious nature, but his enthusiasm for life was compelling.
I don't know what happened in Germany - maybe it was drugs, maybe it was some unspeakable incident, and maybe it was something that would have happened eventually and somewhere. Regardless, Bill came back a different man.
After I moved from L.A. to Sacramento I rarely saw him. He came to our small wedding and visited occasionally during the next ten years. Each time I saw him he seemed more disturbed, even frightening, as his connection with "normal life" became more tenuous.
About ten years ago he drove into town in a brand new Cadillac. He stayed for the afternoon, watched a football game and left. He never told us how he got the money for such a vehicle, but I assumed it was from a lawsuit related to his "change". That was the last time I saw Bill.
Friends told me they had seen him rummaging through dumpsters on Hermosa Avenue, just blocks from the beach where we played fierce volleyball games; body surfed and competed with each other for the attention of the newest girl in our group.
Someone else had seen a disheveled Bill walking vacant-eyed along Hollywood Boulevard. We used to cruise Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards on Friday nights, riding in his big-finned Chrysler or my bigger-finned Plymouth. We loved looking at the strange people who inhabited that area.
A year before his death two friends and I visited Bill's house, the scene of some legendary all-night poker games. His mother said Bill would come home periodically for a day or two to clean himself and wash his clothes. Before stocking up on food and leaving. She was always glad to see him when he came home, but was equally relieved when he left. She never knew where he came from or went to.
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Last week, walking back from The Weatherstone carrying my morning coffee, I encountered an unkempt man about my age propped up against the doorway of my office building. He sat in a pool of urine sipping vodka from a small bottle
.As I side-stepped him and unlocked the front door, I diplomatically suggested that he find a more suitable location. He said he was just about to go, but he wanted to admire the massive elms for a bit longer. He wasn't from Sacramento, but said he liked our city. The man spoke clearly, almost poetically, despite his obvious inebriation, and his blood-shot eyes sparkled as he spoke.
Fifteen minutes later, while rushing to finish some work project, I looked out my window as a paddy wagon stopped in front of our building. The two police officers systematically put on their rubber gloves, guided him inside and took him away. He could barely keep his balance, but did not resist. The routine seemed familiar to him.
I thought again of Bill. Had the last years of his life been like that? Did he frighten people as he walked toward them? And how had he died?
I had questions, but really didn't want answers. I just knew that Bill's exuberance was gone from the Earth; it probably left long before he died.
My emotions are still mixed when a disheveled man or woman walks directly toward me or pushes a noisy shopping cart down the center of my quiet street. But I look at him or her differently now, knowing that this person may have once lived a life not unlike my own.