Joseph

“Crystal bright days of seventy eight degrees simply do not feel like Christmas. They never have and they never will. While I have often joked that white sand dunes are excellent alternatives to pristine banks of wind driven snow, even I know it is not true. They are in fact poor substitutes, at best. Just as 'Twenty nine shopping days left before Christmas' is a poor substitute for 'Peace on Earth and good will to all men.'

There are times when I am concerned that all that remains of the old Christmas Spirit are twelve strands of tinsel, a handful of shards from a broken glass ball, and four splinters of an ancient Yule log. Even these tattered remnants only survive because no one has yet found a way to sell them, and they stubbornly refuse to rot.”

Those cynical words are over twenty years old. They are my own. As you may well guess, they were penned during what will be generously termed “not a good time.” One of the benefits of far removed retrospection is the ability to airbrush out the worst of the blemishes in your own past. I have kept these words, etched on one of those big vacant walls in the many vast and cluttered back rooms of my mind, because each year I know these sentiments shall revisit me, and I shall have need of these words again.

I keep them not so that I may have a ready rant available; I have tons of those in another room. I keep them because attached to them is the memory of how they were proven so wrong then, and so must remain wrong still. In the memory of disproving my own “Bah, Humbug!” in the past, I find assurance in disproving all others in the present. I found my lost Spirit of Christmas, due in large part to a man ironically named Joseph.

Joseph had eerily pale eyes with a long, vacant stare that very clearly said four dollars short of a nickel and probably not your next good chess game. More specifically, Joseph was schizophrenic. A somewhat functional schizophrenic, in that he could do day-labor jobs if he could find any, and he could feed himself, if he was lucky.

When I met him, he hadn't been very lucky lately. It was the late eighties and the Reagan administration, in drastically reducing the Federal budget for mental health care, had just turned thousands of Josephs out onto the streets. At first I had done what most of us do when we meet someone like Joseph. I had slipped him a few bucks, and remembered my father's words at such times. “There, but for the Grace of God, go I.” I then, lacking the Grace of a God, had gone.

I encountered Joseph again, some weeks later, while taking a shortcut walking home, in a small stand of woods behind a Burger King on U.S. 1 in Cocoa. I came upon a cardboard refrigerator box that was Joseph's current home. I again insisted he take a few bucks, and upon returning home, came back with an assortment of canned goods, a can opener, a jug of water, and a couple of cans of sterno to heat them on. I am sad to say, that was the extent of my help – at least until several days later.

The weatherman announced the coming of a large cold front. The temperatures that night were going to plunge well below freezing, with wind chill we going to be in the teens! Maybe it's because I'm a “bleeding heart “Liberal. I'd like to think it's just because I'm a human being, but my first thought was that there was a man living in a cardboard box in the woods not one thousand yards from my heated home. I had never knocked on the outside of a cardboard box before to announce myself to its resident, but my mother had always said it was polite to knock.

After the ten minutes required to convince a bewildered Joseph that I was not going to hurt him, I explained that a freeze was coming that night. Another ten minutes finally convinced him that his one blanket was not enough to keep him warm, especially since what he was calling a blanket was really just a beach towel. I had a spare room, a hot shower, a clean change of clothes, and a hot meal. More importantly I had an extra bed in a heated house, and he was welcome to stay there until the freeze passed. The details required an extra half an hour, but in the end Joseph did relent.

Was he dirty? Oh yeah! But that's what showers are for. Did his clothes smell? Like the fermented wrong end of a dumpster! But that's what washing machines are for. Did I hide the kitchen knives? Sadly, yes I did. I also locked my bedroom door, but I slept knowing that at least this one fellow human being would not freeze to death for want of my minimal effort. It was a good sleep.

Joseph left the next morning after donning his cleaned clothes and leaving the ones I had given him neatly folded on the bed. He came back the next night, as I had told him to, and for the next three nights until the freeze had passed. I learned that his only remaining family consisted of two married sisters in the Carolinas, and he didn't know the married surnames of either. He had been a patient in a mental health facility in North Carolina when politics had put him out on the street. He had walked most of the way to Florida, because he remembered it was warm.

Let me say that again. He had WALKED most of the FIVE HUNDRED MILES to Florida, because he remembered it was warm! Most of the few people who had given him a ride hitchhiking had stopped and let him back out. They had apologized, but said he smelled. Eventually, he had given up and just kept walking. I contacted every mental health organization I could find, and many who I only found because they were referred by others. They were all completely swamped with Josephs, all of whom had remembered it was supposed to be warm.

Joseph left the wood some months later. The box dissolved in the rain, and I carried the last of it to a dumpster. I have no idea what ever became of him, but I wonder every time I see someone with that stare. That hurt and hopeless stare of the lost and forgotten. It is the look of someone who knows themselves to be totally alone.

I don't relate this for my own sake. I did very little in the grand scheme of things. I relate the incident in the hope that some of you may realize that often even “very little” can help very much. There are still thousands of Josephs out there, particularly at this time of year. They have come because they heard Florida is supposed to be warm. Find them. It isn't hard, just look at the people you don't normally make eye contact with.

If all of us do even a little, together we can help a lot. We can prove that Florida is not warm in the winter because of its geographical location, but rather due to the warmth of its collective heart. This is a season of giving for people of most religious persuasions as well as many with none at all. It is also a time when the name Joseph has particular meaning. So in between counting the shopping days left until Christmas and trying to find the best sales, find a Joseph. Help a Joseph. 'Tis the Season. Who knows, with luck we may even learn to remember all the Josephs during the other seasons as well.

May what ever God you embrace, embrace you as well, and may you learn from the example and embrace others in turn. Merry Christmas, Joseph. I hope you are well.