The Best Hearts Are Often Overlooked

Attentive people on Twitter have heard me speak of Timmy. He is fifty years old and child like but never unintelligent. He is the one who always laughs, "I have clowns in my belly!" I'm pretty sure he does.

Last year Timmy asked me to make him a scarf and I did. I really like Timmy's no nonsense way of asking for things. I never doubt where I stand with him. I could have told him "no" and he would have been fine with that, too. When I presented the scarf to Timmy he was thrilled. He loved the color and texture and the personalized name tag saying it was made especially for him. He wore it proudly as we parted. I never saw it again. I asked him about it on one particularly cold day. Timmy's head drooped and he said he lost it.

That was last year. This year Timmy asked if I'd make him another scarf. I laughed at him and told him I'd buy him a scarf if he needed one. But Timmy really wants one of my scarves so he admitted he gave the previous one to a homeless person. He told me the whole story. It was typical Timmy. It was freezing cold. He had a place to go but the homeless man did not so it made sense to give him the scarf so he could be a little warmer. Timmy knows I've been homeless and have a sensitivity for people in that situation but I also know there are people you can help and people who don't want practical help. I've no idea which type this homeless man was but he could have been just as warm with a five dollar scarf as he was with the one it took me days to crochet. I told Timmy I would be happy to give him a store of scarves for that situation but he is right, the man was cold RIGHT THEN and needed warmth.

Tonight he came up to me and reminded me about the scarf. I told him I am halfway through with his and I will give him that and another half dozen if I never have to hear about the scarf again. He smiled with that smile that told me that was not what he came to talk about.

Timmy told me he was walking on a frigid night such as tonight but it was twenty years ago, when he made six figures and he was a software engineer. He was in a hurry. A homeless man asked him for a dollar. He gave him five dollars. The homeless man was overwhelmed by his generosity and gave him a garbage bag.  Timmy was surprised to get anything in return for his five dollars so he gave the man another hundred. Timmy told me how he has carried that garbage bag with him from home to home and never forgotten about that night.

Timmy says he keeps the garbage bag near his bed with his cross and rosary. When his friends are going through bad times he prays for them at this alter he has made and every time his prayers have been answered. Timmy has a lot of faith in that garbage bag he has carried for twenty years. It is his treasure.

After he told me the story he explained he never wears jewelry, not even a watch. He was firm on this fact. Then he pulled out from his shirt a cross and rope braided from a garbage bag. "I just felt I had to wear it tonight and tell this story," said Timmy. I confirmed with him the garbage bag is still in the same condition as when he received it.  Timmy nodded and replied, "This is my one hundred and five dollar cross."

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05.19.2011 My beloved friend, Timmy, passed away this May 11th, too early in his life. I'll miss him terribly but will forever remember the clowns in his belly, hear the echo of his laugh and feel my own heart swell when I think of his. Godspeed dear friend. I love you.


(Picture: Timmy's garbage bag.)

A Parting Gift To My Sister

As I write this my sister lays dying; the third of my siblings to do so in less than three years. The cycle of emotions I have been feeling this time around are different. We have simultaneously had no relationship, yet a loaded one. Logic would dictate I feel nothing but it is not that simple.

When I was born, K was less than a month shy of her 19th birthday. There are photographs of K in her CNA uniform, at the hospital, bundling me for my ride home with our parents. I don’t ever recall living with her or being welcome in any home in which she resided.

I have mentioned K in other posts. She has never been kind to me but I am told that is just her way; she is not malicious but instead unfiltered. Often, intent makes little difference. When a company poisons the soil or groundwater in a neighborhood it hardly matters whether they did so with malice aforethought or through simple negligence. If you hope to live, you move elsewhere to try to escape the damage. That has been my primary coping strategy with K and our oldest brother but given that families are not real estate, my strategy has been only partially successful. I have occasionally been pulled back into the sister role to distract K during funerals or festivities where her unfiltered tendencies may have damaged others’ important lifetime memories.

Please do not think I never tried to have a relationship with K but now is not the time to rehash all those instances. There is much I don’t understand and will never know because of the years that separate us. I hoped as adults the rift would mend and our commonality would pull us together. Twenty years after the loss of our parents this had not happened and it seems likely it never would, even if cancer were not robbing her of the twenty more years she deserves.

I have spent these weeks of Ks illness replaying our past, wondering what to do or if there is anything I could do before circling back to emptiness. Years I have mulled over how my birth could so offend and whether I owe it to anyone to rectify my presence in life at this late date.

I have stayed away and hope this is the right decision. I stare at a family tree she penned for our Grandmother when I was in high school. I am not on it. I know I could care for her and help her be more physically comfortable but I can do nothing to cure her. I hope by at least pretending I don’t exist, this will give her comfort in her final days.