I got some shocking news recently. My friend, John, died. It was 10 days before I heard. At least. You see, nobody knows when he actually died. His upstairs neighbour had to smell him out first.
John died alone at the age of 62. Estranged from his family, he was not reported missing and no one claimed his body as it lay in the morgue for more than a month. I had to sign to receive the body for burial.
We all could see there was something desperately wrong with John these past six months. He was losing weight. The spring in his step was gone. And yet he still tried to inject humour into our day. He was still interested in the world, at least his corner of it anyway. And yet in the end, he died alone, nobody there to care for him when he suddenly became unable to care for himself.
I feel sad about that. A lot of his friends feel sad about that. It just shouldn't happen that way. You could say that about a lot of John's life. I feel sad about the many aspects of his life that "shouldn't have happened that way."
I knew John because he was a regular user of the food bank at the church I serve. John came in every month and pored over the offerings to pick out the healthiest foods he might find.
Although he came for the food, he also came for the friendship he found there with people who respected him and enjoyed his company. He enjoyed the visits so much that occasionally we had to tell him to leave because we had work we needed to do.
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John was a bright guy with a great sense of humour. He had many skills, including playing the piano, and lots of gifts to share with the world. He liked to entertain, to engage in an intellectual discussion, to imagine worlds beyond the mundane. He didn't seem to have a mean bone in his body, though he was justifiably angry about the way his life had gone. He was organized and did a great job of living within his meagre means, always concerned about healthy living and healthy eating.
And yet, events in John's life caused him to be sidelined from the regular fray of living that most of us work our way through. He was raised in a foster home and some things happened in those early years that derailed his life. John told me it was a harsh, unloving environment with considerable physical punishment.
I've known John for six years and in all that time he was basically unemployed. Many probably considered him unemployable, but I'm sure that was not true. He needed a few accommodations to allow him to work when he was emotionally able, but the system did not provide what he needed.
John was on a disability pension and stuck in the rut it produces. He needed medications to deal with the demons that plagued him in his inner being. He was trapped. He couldn't earn enough to pay his bills and afford the medications that kept him healthy, and could never make the leap to the world of the employed that so many of us take for granted. And so he existed, stuck. Stuck with a marginal existence that kept him alive, but barely.
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Now we are mourning the loss of him. We will miss his visits, which always brightened our day. We will miss his playing the piano, his jokes, his irreverent but caring nicknames for us.
And I'm trying to find a place for the sadness I feel that, as a society, we consigned John, as we do so many others, to a life of poverty through no fault of their own. People like John deserve the opportunity to make a contribution to our world through working and paying taxes the way most of us do. People like John deserve a life that is comfortable, not a life of scrambling from disability cheque to disability cheque, constantly worrying that the rules will change and their benefits will be cut off.
Can we use the story of John's life and death as a wake-up call to understand that all of us deserve to live in dignity? I hope that by sharing the part of John's life that I know, I will help more people become aware of the need to reform the way we support our brothers and sisters in society who are unable to live fully independent lives.
I see a need to move from a mindset of suspicion that those who need a hand up are merely trying to "milk the system."
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To support John humanely may not have cost any more than it did to support him in the way we did, giving him barely enough to exist on and preventing him from using the strengths he had to augment his living. I pray that others will get the support they need so they don't die alone and undiscovered as John did.
John, you were a treasure, a unique and worthwhile person. I am proud to have been your friend and wish you all the best in the world you are in now, where the blemishes of this life are taken away. Rest in peace, dear one.
Rev. Barbara White lives in Toronto and is minister of Bedford Park United Church.