TODAY at noon I walked the two blocks from my office to the park. I walked with a definite feeling of well-being and peace of mind–then I got to the park and sought a comfortable place to sit for awhile, before going back for the afternoon’s work.
It was then I saw him.
He was lying under a tree, an unfinished bottle of cheap wine at his feet and his crutches at hand. He was dead to this world, dead drunk. These few lines tell his whole story: his crutches (which he won the right to use by staggering in front of an automobile one Sunday morning) were lying beside him, and the bottle that brought him to all this was not too far away.
I was filled with pity and revulsion.
You see, his story is my story–but mine is told and ended, I pray.
However, I have not forgotten that I roamed these same streets with him only a short time ago (just three years). I sat in this same park and drank from the same bottle with him. We wore rags together, slept on the ground together, and drank together–into oblivion. We thought there was no one to care.
And then came the day, with 40¢ between us, when he spent our last money for busfare, took me by the hand and led me to AA. He showed me there are people who care, but he left.
Why didn’t he stay with me there?
Man that I married so long ago, I care. You found for me people who do care–now, what is going to happen to you?
thats very sad but each has a right to its own journey and takes itself through it somehow, poor animals we are we never get far , it’s very sad very very sad
tread lightly on the earth but if other people were a simple presence who thought of others and treaded kindly it would be better