Taking Chris to buy a suit for graduation, we took a shortcut through an alleyway that linked the downtown parking lot to the mall.
Out of a large garbage container, a head popped up. It was a homeless man rummaging through a restaurant’s swill, searching for food.
“What are you doing?” I asked. The man took fright, scrambling out of the six-foot-high container. “Nothing,” he replied.
Wrinkled and unshaved, wearing a once white T-shirt spattered with grease, the old man began to retreat backwards. “Hey! Hold on,” I insisted.
The man looked uncannily like my late father. Dad had been the most dapper in suits and ties, clean-shaven with a dazzling smile. He always reminded me of Clark Gable, one of many movie stars we would watch together in a dozen cinemas at home in Africa.
Living on his own, Dad would visit us weekly bearing groceries and favourite snacks for my boys. One day he didn’t show up. Calling him several times—getting no answer—Laura and I panicked and went to his home. The building superintendent let us into his apartment. There was Dad, staring out with vacant eyes, unshaven, his wrinkled suit spattered with stains, at a table piled with half-eaten food. Oh! the smell of that rotting food.
It was dementia in its severest form. The condition had seized him within a matter of weeks. Dad had that same haunted look I saw in the face of the homeless man who was cautiously retreating from me. I searched my pocket, came up with a $20 bill, and handed it over to him.
The gaze on Christopher’s face was as bewildered as the one on the homeless man. “Pops, why did you do that?”
“To give him hope—that perhaps tomorrow, he’ll find someone else able to feed him and help him out. Chris, it’s the most precious gift you can give …HOPE.”
