The Last Straw

Dear Sir and Madam,

Instead of searching for food this morning, I sought out pen and paper. Words will be my sustenance today, and I invite you to feast with me at what I have come to think of as my last supper. A compassionate school girl, much like your own daughter, took pity on me, stopping in the rain to place these requested supplies in my hand. I hope her parents do not punish her if they hear she chose to speak with me and take pity on an old man. Up until recently this simple kindness would have given me strength to carry on for days. Now, however, I am spent.

Mr. Evans, the previous owner of your restaurant, provided me with many meals these past two years. When he handed the food out back, he was always willing to include a smile, which sweetened my moments even more than the desserts he so graciously gave. I hope he knew, more often than not, I gave those meals away to others more desperate than myself.

I have thought of Mr. Evans often while putting pen to paper for this composition you now hold in your hands. I slid open that drawer in my mind (you have one as well) and sifted, sifted, pulling out my fondest memories in order to revel in them one last time. His face is one of myriad images that have flashed before me.

I have savored each one: my dark-haired beauty in her wedding dress, a former student who came to visit many years later to hold up his success like a completed patchwork quilt for me to admire. Dining with my cousin at our favorite restaurant (I used to actually eat inside. Imagine that!) where we doused the homemade biscuits with cinnamon butter. “Yes,” we would say, “we’d like some biscuits with our butter.” The waitress with bright blue eyes who would smile at our familiar joke. My dog, Sonny, whom I loved dearly even though he crowded me out of the bed nearly every night, but whose warmth was undeniable.

Mr. Evans knew my story, why I am where I am now, but you do not. I cannot fault you, Sir and Madam, for not knowing my history.

I can, however, indict you for assuming you knew me. For shouting at me to “get away from the door, you measly, witless old man.”

I can admonish you for your cruelty. As you well know, after you turned me away, your little daughter brought bread out for me in a small basket with a carefully placed pat of butter. You probably don’t know, however, I heard the punishment you delivered to her soon after discovering her kindness to me. I heard her cries as she was taught a lesson about “wasting food”. In the future, you should be more careful to shut the door all the way.

Before my wife passed, she told me to fill up the world with as much goodness as I could muster. I assume she was speaking of the students I was teaching. She wished for me to remain hopeful, but neither of us anticipated the tsunami of grief that would, for a time, wash away my wits and end up costing me the little I had left. But even here, on the streets, I have tried to do some good. People like Mr. Evans helped me.

I sold my wife’s wedding ring today for a healthy sum. You both probably think How foolish! You could have gotten money for it long ago. As the only piece I had left of our life together, I trust you will understand. I had decided I would never sell it unless I reached a point of desperation I could not overcome. I find I am no longer desperate to stay in this world, though. Buying the pills, in my mind, is buying a ticket to escape this world I no longer belong in so that I can join my dark-haired beauty and, my old man heart smiles at this, maybe even Sonny.

This letter to you is my last endeavor at goodness. I certainly cannot place all the blame on you since I have seen much in my time out here. But I feel you should know you were my breaking point. I have not the courage of Giles Corey in The Crucible; I can bear no more weight. I am too old, too broken, too tired to seek out another Mr. Evans or to hear the cries of a child being thrashed for showing compassion.

So I leave you with this. We can be many things to others in this world, but we should avoid, at all costs, ever being someone’s last straw.

I hope I have been a sufficient host whose words have in some way filled the emptiness within you both.

A Wayfaring Stranger