11/16/09: The Lady on the Train

I got on the train to head home from work. It was early, but the train was already starting to get crowded. A woman sat down next to me carrying a bag similar to my computer bag, a satchel, and a purse. She was dressed in plain black clothing that appeared well taken care of. I commented to her as she shuffled her bags around to make room, "Going to work is almost like packing luggage for a trip any more." She smiled at me and said "Oh no, honey, I can't work. This is everything I own. I have been living on the streets for 20 years." As she spoke I noticed that the edges of her coat and bags were frayed, and her shoes were well worn. She was clean and kept herself up. Her clothes were tidy. I wouldn't have noticed the fraying and other signs of poverty if I had just been passing her on the street. She did not have a "needy" demeanor about her.

"If you had told me 20 years ago that this is how I would end up, I would have never believed you." she told me. "I come from a wealthy family who lives in this area. I married the love of my life and he went off to war. He died shortly after he got back. I married another man a couple of years later who took me for everything. That's what happens when you trust the wrong people."

"I had never worked before, but I managed to get a job doing sales. It was commission, but I did pretty well. Then at a sales seminar, a woman claiming to work for the hotel asked if I wanted her to pick up my laundry and bring it to my room. I told her "That would be very nice. It will allow me to get home early and give me more time with my baby." A few weeks later, I started getting calls about debts and bills. Before I knew it, I was in bankruptcy court fighting for my last few possessions. I left my child with a neighbor while I went to court. When I got back home, the police were there with child services. The neighbor had beaten my child severely. One of my other neighbors had called me while I was in court and told me my child was screaming and I needed to get home right away, but I told her I couldn't leave. That was 30 years ago. I have not seen my baby since. They declared me an unfit mother for not leaving the courtroom when I got the call and for leaving my child with that woman."

"I lost my job and got another one as a secretary. When I asked for time off to take care of my mother while she was dying, I was fired. My boss told me that everyone in the office had a mother and he wasn't going to make exceptions for me. I went and took care of my mother until the day she died. My brother was a deacon at the baptist church. He didn't even come to her funeral. His wife was an attorney and he was executor of the will. He kept everything."

"About 10 years ago, I had a heart attack. As I was getting out, one of the nurses asked me if we were related. I told him I was his sister. She told me he was lying in the hospital dying. I went to his bed and asked him to wiggle his finger if he wanted me to stay. He wiggled his finger, so I stayed. For 3 days I spent all the time I could with him. He couldn't talk, but I told him I loved him and I forgave him. No one else came to see him. I tried to find out about the will and hopefully get some things of my mothers that were precious to me, but his wife took everything. Can you believe that she didn't love him enough to visit him while he was dying, but because she was his wife, she got everything? And without a penny to my name there wasn't anything I could do about it."

"I had a second heart attack a few years later. And last year I found out that I have breast cancer. Now I am just waiting to die. I went from a world of silk, lace and patent leather to living on $5000 a year - no friends, no family, just waiting to die. I can't get treatment for my cancer because I live on the street and really no reason to care anyway. I lived my life as a giver, not a taker, and watched everything get taken from me. No, if you had told me I would end up living this way, I never would have believed it." As she got up to get off of the train, I asked her if she would be offended if I offered her money to help her out. She said "Oh no, honey. I didn't tell you all of that because I wanted money or expected anything. I just thought you looked like a giver too and I don't want you to suffer like I have suffered. You watch out for people who take advantage and be smarter than I was."

There are so many wrongs in this woman's life I can't count them all. So many things in her life failed for her including society as a whole. Yet she took the time every day to get up and wash the only set of clothes she had, wash herself, get on a train to the shelter to get a meal, then go home to her subsidized housing. Through it all she held her head high and kept her dignity. She talked about how she had been turned away from a local church function because she couldn't pay the $1 for the raffle ticket. She talked about how people treated her badly at the Salvation Army (she called it a Den of Thieves - she had to leave the train before I knew why) or would shoo her away from the grocery store because she was a few pennies short for a can of food. This is another human being. Is that really the best we can do?