I met Dave when he was assigned to our church as part of the Safe Park program for people living in their cars. For a year and a half, his car was the first thing I saw when I arrived at church in the morning, or the last thing when I left after an evening meeting. Often in the mornings, he was still asleep so I didn’t rouse him.
He was a great guest, notifying us when there was something suspicious happening in the lot, never littering, doing his best to observe the rules. Sometimes he overslept and was always gracious when I woke him up. He watched out for other Safe Park guests as they came and went. On cold winter evenings and hot summer nights, Dave stayed in his car.
As a church we did our best to help. Our Little Free Pantry provided some food and we began to serve meals a couple times a month to Dave and other Safe Park guests. A 10-year-old boy and his mother provided a meal every few weeks. After evening meetings at the church, I would check in with him.
Dave tried hard to find work that would get him into permanent housing. Once he got flown to New York for a job interview that seemed almost his, but in the end it fell through. He admitted to tears. Finally he got a job at a call center. It wasn’t much but he began to dream of a studio apartment. Though he did not attend worship, he seemed like a part of our church.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit and the call center closed. Dave was still sleeping in his car. A few months later, he noticed a lump on the side of his throat: It was cancer.
I knew he could not endure the rigors of chemotherapy and radiation while living in his car. I called the local Council for the Homeless, which found him a spot at the Motel Six, and eventually an apartment in cooperation with Share. A woman from our church donated her entire first stimulus check to help him. Others donated furniture and household goods. Our lay minister and her partner provided rides to medical appointments when Dave was no longer able to drive.
Cancer treatment was brutal. Dave grew weaker, unable to eat or even drink. We rejoiced when the treatments ended and a scan showed no sign of the tumor. Still, he could not eat. He lost a lot of weight. A few months ago, he ended up in the hospital for nine days. On his release he was much stronger, and we hoped for recovery.
A few days after that, however, he stopped responding to texts or emails and at last our lay minister and her partner checked on him. Dave was dead. He died in a loaned recliner, apparently of natural causes. It seems that his last contact was with his son, with whom he had recently reconciled.
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” the poet Robert Frost wrote in “The Death of the Hired Man.” Our church became Dave’s home for a year and a half, and even after he moved into the apartment. He had moved into our hearts. We didn’t have to take him in, we chose to and never regretted it.
Frost continues, “I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” Dave deserved a home, as do all the others who are without one. I understand that now in a deeper way. Home.
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