Widows & Widowers Support Group
This community is dedicated to those who have lost a husband, wife, or partner. Anything is open for discussion here, with the hope that we can focus on grief, bereavement, life after loss, and continuing on after a great loss.
My great-granddaughter graduated from high school and will be attending college in the fall. It was not very long ago she was, along with the family attending his funeral and burial. It was so wonderful to see walk on stage. Of course I cried tears of happiness. Afterward the entire family went out to eat. We all needed this welcomed occasion to gather the strength to keep moving forward. He posed with me for pictures when she graduated from 8th grade. We really felt his spirit was with us and it made us smile. Truly he was there witnessing it all.It On today our church held a clothing drive for the homeless. I "bit the bullet" and gathered his suits, dress coats, some of his shoes and my daughter and I took them to our church. I couldn't take them to a thrift store. I felt he would approve as we have worshipped at this church for thirty years and he was an usher. It made me feel at ease knowing he would like that. I continue to pray for all of us as we walk this path of uncertainty. May you be strengthened, comforted and that above you will have perfect peace.
And congrats to you for the strength you mustered to donate your husband's clothes. (I'm still trying to do that)
Hugs,
Janie
I am also donating my wife's clothes. They are all washed & packed in boxes. I am giving them to a woman who was best friends with my best friend Mario, who died last September. We were like a little family, she calls me uncle. She was homeless for many years, and after Mario died she went to an agency and did the dance she had to do to get services and her own subsidized apartment. She also encourages other hard core street people to get it together to get off the street. The clothes she can't use, she will find people who need them.
I take exception at the term "the homeless" as if they are a different species. I was homeless mostly with my family for almost 10 years. There are so many causes and exits that one cannot refer to "the homeless" as a coherent group, as something other than ourselves, we may all easily become homeless ourselves.
Our fall was at the hands of cruel and avaricious landlord/attorneys who vowed to destroy us because we withheld rent demanding repairs. Even after we agreed to drop our demands, and pay the back rent we had in escrow, the judge who was in their pocket would not close the case, he said he was going to teach us a lesson. The trial dragged on for months, bankrupting us. Our "expert witness" testifying about the inadequate electrical wiring was dismissed by the judge for "not being an expert witness in enough trials." We were fined punitive damages, and a few years later when the landlord/attorneys threatened to subpoena my wife's private psychotherapy patients to attach their fees and satisfy the judgment, her practice started falling apart, and we had to move to a cheaper place.
I was sick & unemployed, and landlords were reluctant to rent to my wife, who was self-employed with much of her income in cash from her clients. She had no living family, and my uncle & mom had a paranoid obsession that my wife only married me to "get their money" so they wouldn't help us a bit by co-signing a lease etc. Then they told all my relatives we were in trouble because we were on drugs (a lie) and soon our savings were spent on hotels and we were on the street.
We slept on the subway and train station waiting rooms. We stayed up all night in diners, paying the "rent" one cup of coffee at a time. For a while we slept in a storage room, until we were kicked out.
I went to the emergency room in St. Vincent's hospital one night. I told them I wanted to get better, that I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and I wanted a referral to get it together and take care of my family. I didn't even see any mental health professional there, and when they discharged me, they wrote "homeless" as my diagnosis on the paper.
For a while I worked as a Tour Guide and could pay sometimes for a room in a hooker motel or an illegal boarding house. Many nights, my wife and daughter waited for me to come home with tips to eat, and sometimes there were no tips, and no dinner. My company closed, and I was scheduled for training at another company the second week of September 2000. 9/11 happened, there was no job.
The county Welfare office put us in a seedy motel on a highway at the edge of town, where they put homeless families. I walked my daughter to school through the parking lot stepping around used condoms. The other families sold drugs and prostituted. That wasn't our scene, we didn't fit in - and that made us suspect with the social workers. It didn't help that my family told the social workers we were on drugs, and it was all my wife's fault.
My wife found a job as a counselor on the official 9/11 hot line. For 2 years she paid for an apartment, then I qualified for aid for losing my job from 9/11 for another year or so. By that time my wife had serious PTSD from being homeless for years, and also talking to 9/11 survivors and first responders for 2 years. She sabotaged my efforts at work, and failed to resume her therapy business with the help of the agency. So we started to go from apartment to apartment, serially evicted, until we landed in a place we only planned to stay a few days, our plans fell through, and we were squatters. The kind landlord didn't have the heart to kick us out, for a while.
It was then that I got fed up with being pathetic, and made a plan for conscious recovery, which included living separately for a couple of years while I built my business. We moved back together a few years ago, we got along and the dysfunction stopped. We had a few good years before her health started failing.
The judge later got disbarred, and terrible things happened to the landlord/attorneys, miscarriages and car accidents. St. Vincent's hospital went out of business. Karma, but that didn't help us.
That's why I hate the term "the homeless" - I prefer to say "street people" to describe people who choose to live on the street, or have no other option.
I'm sorry for the social rant. Your story is very moving.
I have been feeling guilty about my rant about "the homeless" - I want to make it clear I was not criticizing you, it was meant to be educational. Your donation will help a lot of people.
I met so many people on the street, in the shelters, and in the Self-Help Center where my DBSA group meets, who became homeless for so many reasons, and their recovery strategies are also varied, depending on their strengths and abilities.
I guess for me saying "the homeless" is like saying "the blacks" - it's depersonalizing and stigmatizing.
I'm looking forward to my daughter's college graduation in a couple of years!