Their Names Were Harry & Angie

I hope there won't be many things I write that include two people I know, but I would be amiss if I mentioned one without the other. Harry and Angie were brother and sister, yet I met them at different times.

For months I had heard stories about Harry. I had friends that knew him and went to see him often while doing street outreach. They really loved Harry, but they found his unwillingness to move from the street a bit frustrating. On two different occasions they tried to move him in an apartment of his own. Both times, when it was time to move in, Harry would have so many excuses to not go.

When I was a rookie in the street outreach world, it was a head-scratcher. I mean, everyone always asks why he wouldn't want to be indoors, safe, out of the elements, especially since he had been on hospice since 2017. The answer is quite simple and complicated, at the same time. When people are outdoors for so many years, learning how to survive, learning the streets and all that goes along with that, that becomes their normal. They learn where to get food and all the things they need day-to-day. There's a freedom in waking up every single day and never knowing what that day holds, good or bad. The idea of being indoors becomes a dream. It also becomes claustrophobic. The walls seem to push in and it's suffocating.

The very last time we attempted to house Harry, I didn't have very high hopes, only because I knew what had happened the times before. I talked to him often and he always said he wanted to have a place of his own, but the day it was time to move in, he had an almost full blown anxiety attack. Honestly, I felt bad for him. I was also a little frustrated after weeks of work and collaboration, but if I'm honest, I knew this might come. I was almost sure of it.

I let him vent. I listened. And at the end, I told him, "You don't have to move. This is completely your choice." He kept talking and I realized he thought by refusing housing he was letting me down. I said, "Harry, this is your life. You can do whatever you want with it. You're not disappointing me if you change your mind." A look of relief came over him at that moment and ultimately, he did decide to stay where he was, living outdoors.

I always enjoyed visiting Harry and talking with him. He had a sense of humor, even about his impending death. I say impending. Harry was on hospice care from 2017-2022. If it wasn't for some very special, caring people giving him life saving medication, he wouldn't have survived very long after his heart issues in 2017. I think his sister, Angie, may have helped in some ways with that as well.

I met Angie one day in a gas station parking lot. We had stopped to check for a camp behind the gas station and we had gotten back in my jeep the City had given me at the time. I saw her walking across the parking lot, headed towards the highway. I told the two people with me we should talk to her. Before I could even get stopped, our colleague and friend, Don, jumped out of the backseat and in his deep voice, got her attention. She looked terrified. I quickly jumped out of the car and started telling her we were a street outreach team so she didn't think a random man was trying to approach her. Angie laughed and said, "Oh, thank God. I thought y'all were the Collins Police Department." I never found out what happened in Collins, but I'm okay with that.

Angie made me laugh a lot, sometimes probably not meaning too. I think she appreciated I would just sit and listen sometimes. She had so many things going on with her and the more I knew her, the more I felt like her nor Harry were given the chances in life they deserved. The things that had shaped them and led them down certain paths, landed them where they were. It wasn't fair, but those situations rarely are.

Angie and Harry took care of each other the best they could. They loved one another as best they knew how. They had their issues with one another, but at the end of the day, they always ended up moving on from their arguments. I was always happy to see them and once they trusted us, we would talk about other people we knew in the community and how they were doing. I was not prepared for the news I got just a month ago.

I received a text from my friend Tyler early one morning before work. It was actually on July 10, one month ago today. It said that Harry had passed away. I just sat staring at my phone a while and my heart hurt, like always, when I receive these messages. It never gets easier. I was asking questions and asked if he knew where Angie was or the family did. She was who came to my mind first. Tyler wrote back to say Angie had passed away a few weeks before. I was in disbelief. I just sat there, tears in my eyes, thinking about all the conversations we'd had and the visits.

I have to say, them passing away so close together somehow made sense to me. The relationship they had and the way they always checked in on one another, even if they weren't living together, it just made sense.

I wanted so much for both of them, but I know they made decisions for themselves that they thought were what they had to do at the time, and what they were comfortable with in the moments they made them. Everyone has the right to choices and I will never fault that idea, even if I know I would have chose differently for them.

I loved them both and they will be missed. My hope is that they are now both healthy, heart, body, and soul, and they have been given a chance at something beautiful, void of chaos. May they both rest in peace.