Lost Bags

A few weeks ago, I walked out of our building and there was a dump truck on the sidewalk. A bobcat was scooping up tons of baggage - homeless people's items - and throwing them into the truck.

I don't know where the owners of that baggage were. You kind of have to wonder how many people those bags belonged to. And what else was in there? Someone's social security card? Pictures of their daughter or their parents? In some ways the things we have are very much our lives. And here I was, watching as those very items were being casually thrown into a dump truck. It was striking. I couldn't forget it.

But it goes on.

There was also an unattended dog on the curb, a friendly little lap dog, and a dog-catcher pulled up to take it. A few weeks later, I saw a homeless woman with the very same dog. She was someone we had known before. A woman who had never seemed to light up until the subject turned to her dog. So I asked her, "Your dog was taken, wasn't it?" And she spent a long time sharing with me the story of how long it had taken her to find the dog after it was picked up on the curb. How the police said it went here, and she went and searched, and they said, no, maybe it's here. She searched two days, probably eight or nine hours each day, until she finally found her dog.

Of course, she had a little bit of frustration and anger. She didn’t know if the police were really being honest with her, or even cared. And here she was living on the street, and this was maybe that single piece of comfort in her life. Something she loved and something that loved her. Something she could take care of, and yet in that moment for some reason it had been taken from her.

I think she liked being able to tell her story.

When you're really hurt, when you’re really frustrated or disappointed, if you have someone you can share your pain with, at least you can begin to release it. That's when I think that just listening is really important. Letting someone know that you're there to hear them and that their problems are real.

To show they're not alone... and that hopefully they never have to be.

GM