It is Christmas 2016 and Michael and I were briefly in town, a place packed with people intent on getting a bargain in the sales. The town centre appeared to be heaving with zombie like figures, controlled by an indefinable, mindless madness.
‘Let’s go,’ I remarked to Michael. ‘This is horrendous … it really is too much for me.’
Michael nods briefly. He understands what I mean.
As we passed the waste bin, we saw a middle aged gentleman sitting in a tattered sleeping bag that had more holes than filling. Tufts of grey soggy polyester crept out apologetically like torpid caterpillars emerging from hibernation. A florid-faced but cheerful countenance peered out from beneath a black pompom hat, although its owner may as well have been invisible that day, for the spiritually dead kept scuttering by, oblivious to his presence or his needs.
Michael and I slowed our pace even more so that, like the eye of the storm, we refused to be a part of the madness around us. We did not say a word to each other but in unspoken tandem we set off to the nearest Gregg’s where we purchased a bacon sandwich and a large cup of milky coffee. ‘Should we put sugar in it?’ I murmured without even expecting an answer from Michael. ‘The homeless have too few choices already!’
Again, as if we could read each other’s thoughts, we took the sugar sachets and wooden stirrer separately and slipped them into our pockets.
We had the same dilemma with the bacon sandwich when we were asked if we would like sauce on it. I didn’t really know what the gentleman would like and sachets weren’t available so in this we concurred that we wouldn’t put any sauce on.
Then we walked back through the melee and handed the steaming coffee, and bacon butty over to the gentleman who we learned was called Andy.
As I sat on the bin listening to Andy, he told me how he became homeless……… how his daughter was born deformed and without a brain and how he started drinking from that day onwards to cut out the pain many years ago. When he separated from his wife he lived in a flat; but, if he paid all the bills he didn’t have the money to buy alcohol to take away the pain of seeing his daughter born the way that she was, and eventually he became homeless. He says that life isn’t bad, that the university blows out warm air and that on Christmas Eve he slept there for three hours before the police moved him on and away from the warmth.
Before we moved on, we thanked him for the privilege of having him share some of his life story with us, and in return he thanked us for listening. As we parted, I noticed that hundreds of people still walked by this invisible man, without a word, without a glance ……. and I felt angry……… and hopeless……. and saddened by the society we have become.
Andy’s final words were an apology. He apologised, stating that next time he saw us he probably wouldn't remember us as the alcohol had damaged his brain. I recall thinking that that was an easy thing to forgive. What was not so easy to understand though, were the masses of the unseeing and the unmoved who had failed to understand the true meaning of Christmas.
Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling you the solemn truth. Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me – you did it to me.’