Mike's Story

Mike found the love of his life and married her; they could finish one another's sentences. They worked hard, but they were happy together. Mike's bride conceived and gave birth to a beautiful blue-eyed baby girl, and Mike understood what it means to love unconditionally. When his daughter was about two years old, Mike and his wife began noticing small, light bruises appearing on their angel. Believing someone at her daycare was mistreating his angel, Mike went to her school and questioned her teachers; they claimed that they were just as befuddled as he was.

One morning, while mike went to work, his wife took his daughter to the doctor. The doctor was so disturbed by what he diagnosed that mother and child were flown immediately to Dallas to Children's Hospital. As they boarded the helicopter, Mike's wife called him and he was off on what he described as the longest drive of his life. In his distress, he had to call 911--the operator he got spoke with him for half an hour, actually guiding him to the hospital.

He walked into his daughter's hospital room, where she lay hooked with tubes and sensors. His daughter greeted him so brightly that the thought of it brings tears to his eyes, even now. Se looked up at him and happily said, "Hi, Daddy!" She stayed in that hospital room for a month, and eventually came to pass away from the Leukemia that had caused her bruises.

Mike's marriage to the one he calls his soul mate melted under the loss of his baby girl. So, he moved on, eventually getting married again. His new wife had two sons from her previous marriage, and he took to raising them as though they were his own. With this new family, Mike began to carve out something of a life, though the sadness that he carried from the loss of his daughter and of the love of his life was ever present within him.

When Carrier began suffering from the economic downturn (politicians were still not daring to say the word "recession"), Mike was laid off from his job of eight years. He says, now, that his mistake was in his pride: when he looked for a replacement job, he kept looking for something in his field, that would pay as well as his Carrier job had paid. The fact is, there weren't many jobs in his field, paying well, in our area, so the days turned into months, and Mike's new family had to grapple with economic hardship: "When you are used to bringing home $1200 dollars each week, taking a job that pays $300 seems inconsequential," Mike told me. Of course, today, that $300 per week seems much too reasonable to have passed up.

Now, Mike lives on the streets. He can't get a "real" job because of his lack of transportation, his lack of an address, and his relatively poor hygiene. Let's face it--the 9-to-5 lifestyle just doesn't mesh well with someone who has fallen (or jumped) out of the system. Mike has a CDL, though, and, now tired from living on the streets for months, he hopes to recover that license and to find a job driving a truck, where it won't matter that he has no home.

Mike tells tiny fibs, like many who live on the edges of things and depend upon sympathy for this week's livelihood. He lives as part of a community of street people, and shares what he gets with a couple of them whose mental or physical deficits limit what they can do for food. Mike says that helping these friends makes him feel human, and that focusing on their problems keeps him from feeling sorry for himself. I don't know if he uses drugs, but I know that his feet are in terrible shape from walking everywhere he goes every day, often without socks. I know that something of his life on the streets is due to his own choices, but I know, too, that he would make a different choice, now.

At times, it is difficult to deal with Mike--he distracts me from my work, and assumes that I have and endless flow of cash to share with him. I struggle with a hardening of my heart towards him because I resent how quickly my handouts run out. But Mike is about my age, and it is easy for me to look into his face and see myself, to feel that it is only by grace that I sit on this side of my desk while he sits on the other.

By fate or choice--or really by both--Mike is one of the least of these. He can be either a problem to be solved, or, hopefully, an opportunity for me to feel my own humanity.