Letter: Homeless Day of Remembrance acknowledges the dignity of homeless people

Letter to the editor

Preparing for Homeless Day of Remembrance, always on the longest night of the year, December 21, I looked through the names of the 16 humans who died this year. I know many of them. It’s not about me any more than it is about all of us, but I want it to be known that those of us who work closely with people who are experiencing homelessness are not like most first responders. We are there for crises and emergencies, but we are also there for more. We know the stories and lives of the people we work with, often for years. It is often not vicarious trauma, where we just hear stories. It is direct; we are there in the moment when violence or an emergency happens.

There are several people on this list I could speak at length about. I started combing through my thousands of photos to pull up shots of people who passed and realized I would be here for days. Days. Today I am thinking about Cathy [her name has been changed out of respect for her family]. Cathy, I met around 2017, 2018. She was a small white woman who lived out in the old Dignity Village encampment. Dignity Village, at its max, had about 300 people. It was where people went who couldn’t or wouldn’t go into the shelter. Often, people would languish there after experiencing a snowball effect of trauma. I remember the first time my mom came to visit out there, she brought women’s underwear and some pretty soft knit hats and gloves. Cathy got a soft pink hat and matching pink gloves with fake pearls attached. She was so happy. I realized then that I didn’t know her style because I had only ever seen her in the context of homelessness. In that moment, I had a little window into what her world might look like, how she might express herself through material things, were she able.

One thing I did know about her, though, was that she loved gardening. She was meticulously maternal as well. She spent years volunteering at the Salvation Army. She took care of all the stray cats and dogs around the shelter. Her dogs were everything to her and were why she didn’t have a bed in the shelter. The shelter was not pet-friendly at the time, and she could not abandon them. Sometimes I would get donations of plants for the garden, and I’d give them to her, and then she would take them to plant around her camp. She would bring me little cloudy, clear baggies that I would fill with plant seeds. That always made me laugh. I would tease her a little about the bags and tell her I was glad we were putting seeds in them. I was blown away the first time I saw her campsite. It looked professionally landscaped. Most, but not all, of Dignity Village was covered in large swaths of the debris of despair — needles, condoms, cans, moldy pizza, old wrappers, old urine-stained clothes. Cathy’s camp had a spiral pathway leading to the door of her tent, with edging and mulch created from the leaves and pine gathered in the forest that skirted the camp. There were blue salvias, marigolds, aloes, lemon grass bunches, various herbs, large century plants, banana trees, and her happy cats ambling through, casually rubbing themselves along the banana tree trunks. There were concentric circles and little universes created from found ornaments and greenery. Cathy’s home was beautiful.

Before Cathy got housed for the first time, I remember how excited she was about getting a job at the Humane Society thrift store. It was so hard to save enough money for the high rent, first and last, and deposit in low-wage work. She really did everything she could. I remember the times she was struggling, and she came to me in the garden to cry. I remember her getting beaten by men repeatedly. I remember one of them breaking her leg. She had a side that could speak up, but for the most part, she was gentle, and I could see her inner child, one who likely had to clean up for a lot of other people.

Cathy created so much beauty despite her wounds. She shouldn’t have died this soon. Homelessness is solvable. Cathy deserved better. She had so much to give, and we failed her. I want to remember her for who she was, not just in death, but in life. I can’t help but think that if we could really see people for who they are in life, maybe they wouldn’t die this way. I hope, wherever she is now, there is a spiral path of flowers leading her home.

Abigail Perrte-Gentil, Micanopy

The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Assertions of facts in letters are similarly the responsibility of the author. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.