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Live United by Erin Haag

On the hottest day of the summer, someone was trying to open our front door. We have kept it locked for security reasons for a long time now, even at our old location. Nikolle was alarmed when she heard how hard the person was pulling on the door, rattling it back and forth. She and I walked out together — safety in numbers right? We saw an older gentleman through the window. He stumbled in, unable to stand upright, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. His snow-white hair was wild, and his long white beard was equally wild and soaked with sweat. We got bits and pieces, but we were trying to get him to stop talking and just breathe. We told him he could stay here as long as he wanted, we just wanted him to take his time and breathe and cool down. Was that OK with him? He nodded his head vigorously — he was more than happy to just sit for a while. The crisis was over for the moment, but I still wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t going to be calling for medical yet.

Eventually he cooled down enough that he was able to articulate that he was OK, and we didn’t need to call. He started talking, a rambling story, with plenty of self-deprecating jokes about himself. He had a home. He had bills. He had income to pay those bills. But gosh darn it. He needed to do something online to access that money to pay the bills, and he just messed it up every time. He transposed numbers, and if you transposed numbers, the money didn’t get deposited into his account. “I just can’t do anything right, I’m just dumb.”

So that happened once. Then twice. Then three times. Because he was dumb. Then he was behind. Then the electricity was turned off. Then the water. He came up with a system to deal with the water though, so mostly it was the electricity so maybe he wasn’t so dumb about that. He’d been living on peanut butter rolls since he didn’t have electricity to cook or to keep the refrigerator running. He liked peanut butter, but he was getting kind of tired of it and it stuck to the roof of his mouth all the time. He had been walking all over town — 20 miles a day, going from place to place trying to sort things out, and he just wasn’t really getting anywhere. He had a phone, but it was an older cell phone that didn’t have much life in its battery. He’d start his day by walking to the library. Charge up the phone. Make a few phone calls. Walk somewhere else to talk to someone when he couldn’t get them on the phone. Walk back because the phone died again. Charge it up again at the library.

I offered him some food. I don’t remember what I had, but I offered it to him. He thanked me but told me he couldn’t eat it because of his teeth. I offered him applesauce, and his face lit up. Nice, cold applesauce. I sat down and ate some with him and we talked. He told me, “After my wife died and then lately, I thought about killing myself, and even tried a few times, but I’m so dumb I can’t even do that right, so now I guess I’ve decided I’m going to live to be a hundred.” I told him that if he was going to be dumb about something I was sure glad that was the thing he was dumb at.

We ate applesauce and charged up his phone. Through the rambling bits and pieces of his story, we figured out how deep the issues ran — but it was so hopeful, too. There was income. There was a home. He had grit and determination. We called Senior Resources of Freeborn County. He needs an advocate, we said. We didn’t want to send him out the door without a plan. The advocate told us she had another client appointment, but if he could wait, she’d come out. Sure, he was happy to wait. We kept him cool, we gave him a magazine to read, and he waited. The advocate got there, and we placed them in a private room. They developed a plan, and she was going to his home the next day to help him untangle the mess. That’s what they do best, walk alongside their clients to help them figure out how to sort it all out.

We didn’t see him for a while then. We worried. We hoped. Then he came! I popped my head in Nikolle’s office. “He’s here!” We saw that he looked a little healthier, a little cleaner. He’d been in the hospital, he said. Pretty sick, but he was recovering and back home. The advocate had helped him sort things out, but it would be helpful if he could shop sometimes. Was that OK? Absolutely.

He comes about once a month. This week though, I saw a big change in him. He’d had a haircut. His beard was nicely trimmed. He was even cleaner and more put together than he had been before. I commented on the haircut, and he smiled at me. He says, “I’m doing pretty good, I haven’t been up at Mayo, so that’s something!” We talked for a few minutes, and I noticed — he didn’t call himself dumb. I told him that. He told me, “well, you kinda got on me about that when we was eating that sauce. So I figured I’d better stop saying it. I’m still walking though. I got me a Fitbit. I walked 30 miles. That’s good for me, keep me going.”

That right there ladies and gentleman, is why we’re here. It’s the purpose of what we do every single day. Days like that, I might not get my to-do list accomplished, but eating applesauce with a man who thinks he’s too dumb to commit suicide — that trumps everything. A man who came out the other side and is happier, healthier and engaged with his community. If you’d like to join us, give us a call at 507-373-8670 to learn more about the myriad ways to help. We can also be reached by mail at PO Box 686, Albert Lea, MN 56007.

Erin Haag is the executive director of the United Way of Freeborn County.