Homeless Friend, Gone But Not Forgotten

My husband and I met Kelly for the first time during the summer of 2006. It was the week after we moved to Maui. A clean-shaven man and his dog were sitting outside the Jack-in-the-Box entrance. We said hello to the man.

During the next six months, I often saw Kelly walking with his dog up and down streets or sitting in front of the Safeway store. He always had a small back pack and I could guess he was homeless. I introduced myself to him one evening when we both happened to be walking down the hill at sunset. He introduced himself and his dog, a shepherd mix.

In a short space of time, Kelly and I spoke as friends. He told me his story while we walked. He had broken his back four years ago. When he couldn't go to work for several months, he lost his job which meant he lost his medical coverage. Soon his condo went into foreclosure. Soon after that he and his dog moved from the condo to the beach. He applied twice for disability, but was turned down each time. Then he found a lawyer to represent him and he won on the third try. He was able to eat pretty well on the disability check, but there was not enough money left to pay for a roof over his head.

He loved his dog. She had been with him for twelve years. Neither of them liked the rain.

He was the son of a good mother and a doctor in California. His parents died years ago -- before he came to Hawaii. He had no siblings. Kelly slept on the beach every night. He told me, “I try to sleep as far away as I can from the others because most of the homeless are on drugs and alcohol. They get rowdy at night. Then the DLNR officers come around and nobody gets any sleep.”

As the months went by, sometimes my husband, Bob, and Kelly and I talked about the obstacles facing homeless people. I thought about Kelly’s predicament a lot and came up with the occasional suggestion for him. I wish I had truly sensed how his hope was like a raw, fragile egg, always in jeopardy of cracking into little pieces.

It seemed unlikely there could be a job for him that would not exacerbate his back pain and where he would be allowed to have his dog with him all day. He insisted his dog had to be with him all day. He didn't want anything to happen to her. Bob and I spoke with hope every couple of weeks when we sat with Kelly at the outside tables of Star Market. If we had still owned a home of our own, we could have invited Kelly to board with us, but we were renting and had a very strict lease. We were not allowed boarders. We were not even allowed guests for more than two weeks.

Kelly always looked nicely dressed when we saw him. He was an impeccable dresser even though he bought most of his clothes at Savers, a second hand store. He took his showers at the community pool and was a frequent patron of the Laundromat. I'm woefully failing at getting Kelly's essence down on the page here. Kelly was an intelligent, genuine and unique person. And when it comes right down to it -- we all are. So how do some of the weird and crazy programs of the federal and state governments get approved instead of bills to find ways to house our people? People, human beings, should be the highest priority to any level of government.

One afternoon I was with my daughter, Priscilla, and my grandchildren when we bumped into Kelly sitting outside of Safeway. He said he was experiencing a terrible toothache and he asked if we could drive him to the Maui Memorial Hospital in Kahului.

All five of us and Kelly's dog crammed into my little car and away we went. I enjoyed Kelly's company as usual. He was so informed on so many issues because he listened to radio shows most of the day. When we arrived at the emergency entrance to the hospital, Kelly said goodbye to his dog in five different Spanish expressions, gave us a wave and disappeared for over an hour. We walked around the grounds of the hospital with Kelly's dog on her leash. When Kelly got back, he asked if I could drive him to the pharmacy at K-Mart because the doctor had given him a prescription for his pain, but didn't have time to pull the tooth this time. He said he would need to come back Monday to have the tooth pulled. I was a little naïve, but my daughter wasn't and she joked with Kelly about the oddness of going to a doctor in a hospital instead of going to a dentist to have a tooth pulled. Kelly was very serious about his toothache and the pain remedy he needed to get.

Kelly asked for our phone numbers after we dropped him off later at the Star Market outdoor café area. He had his pain medicine in a K-Mart bag. As we drove away from the curb, there were three homeless males hurrying towards him, all friendly-like and teasing him that it was time he learned to share his goodies.

A week later, Kelly phoned me and said his toothache pain had subsided so he hadn't bothered to go get his tooth pulled, but now the pain was back. Could I drive him to the emergency ward again? I didn't tell him that my daughter had clued me in on a few things. I just said, "I don't think it's a good idea for you to have more pain medicine, at least not through my efforts, as I don't really know if you are in pain." There was a pause. I thought he might argue with me, but that would be out of character for him.

His voice had a wistfulness to it as he said, "Okay. Thanks, anyway."

I felt really bad. Should I have leveled with him like that? Who was I to doubt if he had tooth pain or not?

Days went by. I went about my usual routines. When Bob and I went walking in the evenings, we hoped to see Kelly. We started to think maybe Kelly was at Star Market when we were walking past Safeway and visa versa. He didn't have a cell phone, so Bob and I couldn't phone him.

One morning about five weeks later, I was buying my morning newspaper at a mall down the street. I saw an acquaintance of Kelly's standing on the sidewalk. I walked over and said, "I haven't seen Kelly around lately. Do you know where he is these days?"

"Kelly left us."

Tears formed in my eyes and I could see the tears in the man's eyes.

"He died?" I asked.

"Yes, about three weeks ago. He was found on the beach with his dog. She was guarding him."

"Was it an overdose -- an accidental overdose -- or what?" I asked.

"Nobody knows for sure. We miss Kelly, that's all I can say. We miss him. And his dog really missed him. She was taken to the Humane Society. I heard through the grapevine they had her there for two weeks and then some friends of Kelly's went and adopted her. When she saw them for the first time she let out a yelp. She recognized them right away. The staff at the Humane Society said she hadn't made a single sound the whole time she was locked in there. She missed Kelly so much that it was breaking all the staff's hearts, but when she saw Kelly's friends, she cried and licked them and let out some emotions."

Two years have gone by now. I don't see any of Kelly's homeless chums around Kihei anymore. Most of the homeless have moved over to a beach area on the other side of the island due in part to the officers in the DLNR's night patrols.

We had a love in our hearts for Kelly and now he is gone from our midst. Our lives were richer while he was here. And many a night, when we were trying to fall asleep Bob and I wondered why it is that we have a roof over our heads and a bed to sleep in while a good man had lived down the street in the forest, sleeping on a single blanket. There are many good people still out there sleeping under the stars every night. I know it's easy to say, "Well, if you're going to be homeless, Hawaii is the place to be." But that doesn't make the days and the nights any easier for the homeless people here. We have wondered many times since Kelly passed away, "What could we have done differently?"

Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.[1]

If anyone has any comments or suggestions or knowledge of some things that are working successfully on the mainland to get the homeless into shelters, get more shelters in place, and get people working at something even in this jobless economy, please add your thoughts to the comment section below.

[1] John Donne

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Copyright © 2009 Pamela Williams (Pamela Kinnaird W)