Every time I saw Linwood he was drunk. Most of the homeless people we serve through TOP on Sunday afternoons stay sober. They don’t want to put off the people who are serving them. Linwood didn’t care. He wasn’t obnoxious or threatening, but you could tell he felt no pain.
On a chilly Sunday afternoon in March, I saw Linwood for the first time in months. We were serving at a small park about a block from the White House. He was sober. I almost didn’t recognize him. Hoping for good news, I sat by him on a bench and asked for an update. He told me about a night during the winter when he woke up cold and couldn’t get warm. For the first time in his years on the street he thought, “I could die out here!”
That was the wake up call he needed to change his life. He immediately cut way back on his drinking and diligently looked for a job. After filling out more job applications than he cared to remember, Linwood found work in the food service industry. Unfortunately, a couple of months into his job, his employer got a new contract requiring all employees to have a food handler’s certification. He didn’t have one, so he got laid off. But there was a silver lining. His boss told him if he got his certification he could come back to work.
That kind of setback would have derailed some homeless people from their paths off the street but not Linwood. That thought of death on a cold winter’s night continued to haunt him. He found out from his boss where he could get the training, scraped together the money he needed and started the class right away.
Without saying a word, Linwood took a piece of paper out of a folder and handed it to me. It was his certificate. He said he was anxiously waiting for a call to come back to work. While I read the certificate, his phone rang. Just a few seconds into the phone call I could see the smile spread on his face as he made arrangements to start back to work the next day. Linwood never was much of one to smile. But on that day, he couldn’t wipe it off his face.
Several months later the guys at the park told me that Linwood stopped by to let them know the job was going great, he was still sober, and he had gotten a place to live. At that moment, I didn’t remember the times I saw him drunk or depressed.
I just saw his smile.