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Thinking today about Melanie, a 57-year-old woman I met at a homeless encampment in Atlanta, while out with the Mercy Care street medicine team. Wearing slacks and a dark blazer, I’d mistaken her for a social worker or case manager. But in fact she lived in one of the tents.
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Later that week, at a nearby Chik-fil-A, she shared her story: how the copays to treat her kidney disease, finally requiring surgery, had set her back thousands of dollars; how this debt caused her to lose her car and then her apartment. She’d been homeless for over a year.
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I’ll never forget when she pointed to a dumpster behind the Chik-fil-A, where a hose was visible. Each day at dawn, she said, she unzipped her tent, used the hose to shower, and prayed that no men were lurking around. Then she got dressed and went to work at a call center.
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That was two years ago today, on the morning of New Year’s Eve. The last time I talked to her was in June 2019. She was still working and struggling to find housing. Later, when I called, her phone was shut off. I went to the encampment but it had been torn down by the city.
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In my notes from that conversation with Melanie, I underlined two quotes.
“We’re always talking about how many of us have been working our whole lives.”
and
“There’s so much temporariness out here. You have to let things go.”
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“We’re always talking about how many of us have been working our whole lives.”
and
“There’s so much temporariness out here. You have to let things go.”
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