An attorney I've worked with called late Friday morning. A demented homeless patient had been found living in a culvert, completely disoriented. There was no known family. The small hospital he was at didn't have a neurologist available and they needed one to evaluate cognitive status for legal reasons. Would I be willing to do it?
My afternoon was actually fairly empty, as Fridays tend to be. So he emailed me the necessary paperwork and releases and I set off across town. After the usual COVID swab, then getting lost trying to find the correct room, I was there.
He was in his late 70's. The nurses had done an excellent job of cleaning him up (nurses deserve far more credit for this sort of thing than they ever get). Now he was in a hospital gown and adult diapers, still smelling slightly of urine, mumbling on and off, and occasionally asking me what school we were in.
I examined him, then sat down with his chart and some old medical records that had been scrounged together, looking to make sure the right things had been checked and ruled-out, the usual stuff that's second nature at this point in my career. I filled out a few papers, scanned them with my phone, and sent them off to the lawyer. I was done.
As I stood up to go I noticed a small pile of random objects on a chair in the corner and realized they were what had been found with him. His only worldly possessions, as the phrase goes.
Curious, I looked them over. A few T-shirts, a pair of socks, a metal water bottle and 2 plastic ones, some unopened bags of candy, 2-3 small stuffed animals. Somewhat incongruously there was a framed picture of a group of 5 men, all in 1970's-ish business suits and ties, standing behind a conference table, all smiling. The table had some scattered pens, note pads, coffee mugs, and a telephone. There was no name or date. The guy 2nd from left was the one lying in the bed behind me.
I have more things than he does, but neither of us gets to take them with at the end.
Out of all the items in the small pile, the picture obviously meant something to him. It was about 8" x 10", and certainly not easy to hold on to through all changes that a life of homelessness brings. But of the things that had connected him with who he'd once been, that was the one he wasn't going to get rid of. Even in the waning shadows of Alzheimer's disease he still thought it was important.
It led me to wonder how he'd reached the current situation. But the possibilities are large, varying from bad decisions to just the terrifying bad luck that can hit any of us. I had no way of knowing, nor was I going to guess. That's not what I was there for.
The things in that small pile were the only ones of value left to him. I suspect the photo was the most prized, simply because, unlike everything else on the chair, it couldn't be replaced, and he'd kept it for 40-50 years.
The detritus of a human life.
