At Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day events across the country, we remember lives lost to homelessness. People who are homeless are highly vulnerable, with premature mortality rates far higher than the housed population. How do homeless service providers cope with the loss and grief that is inherent in this work? Two providers share their experiences of loss and grief with the HRC’s Wendy Grace Evans.

After attending the Homeless Persons’ Memorial Vigil in Albuquerque, New Mexico on December 10th, 2009, I left thinking about the people who lost their lives. I also thought about the homeless service providers who worked with them, and what it means to lose a client. How do providers cope with the loss that accompanies this work?

Nevin Marquez is the program director for St. Martin’s Hospitality Center’s Comprehensive Recovery Team in Albuquerque. He started working at St. Martin’s as an outreach worker. “Initially my job was to go into the streets and find people who were suffering from mental illness, develop a rapport, and work to connect them with the services they needed.”

Nevin shares the story of working very closely with and caring for a man who suffered from schizophrenia. The man lived for twelve years on the downtown plaza. “I always arrived bearing gifts, simple items like food, cigarettes, and water to open the conversation.”

Nevin explains that it is crucial for an outreach worker to always be consistent. “If I break my promise and don’t show up when I say I am going to show up, then I am unreliable, just like everyone else. This creates the belief that I am not really there to help.” Nevin eventually found motel housing for the man, and learned that he had not been receiving his veteran’s pension. Research into the man’s pension revealed that he was owed over half a million dollars. Despite this news, he continued to live on one hundred dollars a week, and later died of bronchial complications. “It was a terribly sad situation, and in the space of two weeks, I lost two people I was working with.”

Nevin talks about how difficult it was to cope with his client’s loss. “There is always guilt. I wondered what I could have done differently. At the end of the day I have to realize that I cannot always create a miracle.” He says that having a supportive team of colleagues helped him process the loss.

St. Martin’s offers team support, mental health days, and bereavement days to help staff cope with the loss that is inherent in this work. “This is the work we do. People are tormented. They become ill and they die.  I have to look at the fact that I am doing my best to help improve people’s lives,” shares Nevin.

Blue Vice is a Relocation Program Manager at St. Martin’s.  She shares that her work gives her a sense of gratitude alongside an awareness of loss. “It is an honor and a privilege that I wake up on this side of the dirt every morning.”

Blue knows all too well how quickly homes and lives are lost. We talk about her work with people, about how she makes connections with people who are living on the street. “I treat people who are homeless the same way I treat everybody else: with dignity. This was the way that I was raised. My father used to talk about the man who complained of having no shoes, until the day he met the man who had no feet.”

In 2009, Blue worked with five people who died in a two week time period. “It was such a short time period. You are there with them, talking to them, and then the next day they are gone,” says Blue. She does not know how to describe the impact of this loss and offers that it is very difficult to confront these tragedies. While losses happen all year long, Homeless Persons Memorial Day services and vigils offer a moment to come together, reflect, and remember each life.

An important resource for providers experiencing the loss of a client is “Taking Care: Coping with Grief and Loss,” a resource from Shelter Health: Essentials of Care for People Living in Shelters, published by the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. It provides reflections and tips for providers coping with the loss and grief that comes with the work of serving a highly vulnerable population.

The guide quotes the words of writer and thinker Henri Nouwen, “…let us not underestimate how hard it is to listen and be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.” Homeless service providers know very well the work of compassionate listening and compassionate action.