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Even on the fringes, a rose can bloom [column]

Author

By Richard Wagamese, Windspeaker Columnist

Volume

31

Issue

1

Year

2013

Wolf Songs and Fire Chats

Our tenants want a rose bush. My wife runs a rooming house. It caters to the marginalized, impoverished, mentally challenged, disabled and the just plain lost. There are 13 of them. Their stories present a face of poverty few have seen, known or been touched by. But we have. In the last seven years we have been privileged to know a couple hundred of them.

Now they want a rose bush. They want to plant it in the spring as soon as the weather breaks. They want to call it Charlene’s Rose. When they told us that it nearly broke us. Not in any bad way but rather in the symbol of the titanic spirit the invisible among us carry.

They want that rose bush to grow in memory of a friend. Charlene. She passed away last week and she was one of them; one of us. We know little of her story, where she came from, what her life was like before we met her or what her issues were. We do know that her sudden passing touched every one of us profoundly. In the short time that we knew her she became a presence everyone cherished.

She came to us from the hospital. My wife met her there where she was wasted away to nearly nothing and being fed by a tube. She wasn’t an addict. She wasn’t a drunk. She was frightened more than anything. She was impoverished, frail, ill and in desperate need of a home. For my wife, that was all the information needed. She offered her a home as long as she promised to take care of her medical issues and feed herself.

She was grumpy at first. She didn’t fit in well. She complained and irritated people. She refused to see her community health worker. She kept to herself and didn’t make any overtures of friendship. She seemed determined to fight whatever battles she was waging privately and in isolation. But one by one the other 12 tenants began to break through to her.

They did it in small ways. A short visit maybe, watching a video together or taking care of an errand for her. She was debilitated. She weighed 80 lbs. at the most. Her bones ached mercilessly and doctors refused to give her painkillers. They all knew that and they came together as a community and began to take care of her. As poor as they are, they gave her anything she needed. Eventually, she bloomed.

Finally, she became strong enough to walk and take care of small errands herself. On one of those outings she was hit by a car and hospitalized. She was so weak the doctors put her in an induced coma for two weeks. We thought we’d seen the last of her. But she fought back. She came out of the coma, bright eyed, cheerful and resolute despite the chronic pain and difficulty walking.

The first thing she did was to thank my wife for her home.

“The reason I’m alive is because I have a home,” she said.
“Thank you for saving my life.” She gave my wife a huge hug and it was perhaps, the greatest gift Debra has received in all the years she’s kept the rooming house. It was a real moment. A heart to heart event and it changed both of them.

We’d go to the rooming house and Charlene’s door would be open. She was engaging and cheerful. She spoke of her pain and how she felt. In her deep brown eyes there was a light and it gave her emaciated body an allure and a sheen that everyone could feel. She was a rose and everyone loved her and wanted to protect her.

But her game heart stopped. It just stopped. One of the other tenants performed CPR desperately until paramedics arrived and she rallied but died later in hospital. Each one of the tenants knew her struggle. They’d made it themselves. Her journey was their journey and they were cheering for her from day one. So they want a rose bush. Charlene’s Rose. To remind them how she bloomed.

We are better for having known her. We are made bigger, more resolute and more determined to overcome the challenge’s life throws our way. Charlene gave us that. She reminded us that the marginalized never marginalize themselves. We do that. We do that by our casual refusal to see them when we pass by; not knowing the incredible strength it takes to live their lives.

When you become privy to that strength, it changes you. You come to understand that there is poverty greater than one of lack. You come to understand that we all need each other. Every one of us. When Charlene’s Rose blooms, that is what I’ll see.