“I’m just here minding my own business.” Tim Moore made this announcement every time
he entered Manna House to get coffee. Tim was a long term guest who started
coming when he was experiencing homelessness. In recent years he had a place to
live, and he worked steadily at “the yellow store” down the street from Manna
House. For the past year or so Tim struggled with a variety of health issues.
He died this past Sunday at work.
“I backslid again and I need you to pray for
me.” Tim approached Moses every time he came to Manna House and asked for
prayer. Tim was well aware of his faults and failings and his need for prayer. Of
the guests who call upon Moses to pray for them, Tim was the most consistent.
So it was that a regular part of the scene at Manna House was Tim and Moses in
a corner or on the front porch, with Moses’ arm extended and hand placed on Tim’s
shoulder, with both of their heads bowed, praying.
“I’m going to get married.” For most of last
winter and into the summer, Tim would tell me on Monday of his plan to get
married. On Tuesday he would express doubts. On Thursday he would tell me the
wedding was off. This went on for months. Finally late last summer he told me, “I’m
out of this getting married business.” I still do not know what began the cycle
or what ended it. But Tim entertained me and many other volunteers and guests
with his marriage announcements.
“He was a good man in his own strange way,” a
guest said in response to the news of Tim’s death. That seems an apt
description of Tim. There was a fair amount of bluster about him (he really
never did mind his own business). He often had lively exchanges with other
guests about nothing in particular. Yet the two photos I have of him are of him
alone. In the one he sits by himself at a picnic table in the backyard of Manna
House. He is not facing the camera (he usually did not like having his picture
taken). In the other photo he is standing alone in the living room of Manna
House looking toward the front door. I had taken the picture one morning when
things had gotten slow and he agreed to be photographed.
“I’m going to miss Tim,” said another guest.
He was echoed by many others. The chill and grey clouds on this morning gave
apt expression to the gloom I felt about Tim’s passing. There is a lot of
coming and going among guests at Manna House. There are new people every day
who arrive for hospitality, and there are many who I see for a month or so and
then they are gone. It is like the ebb and flow of a tide bringing up flotsam
from the chaotic sea of poverty. And then there are guests like Tim, who
faithfully arrive each day, not because they need much, but because they have
made Manna House their own. Tim was more like the captain of a small boat who
came into the harbor each morning with yarns to tell of what he had seen on
that sea of poverty.
Tim’s death hits hard. Thinking of Tim as a
captain, Walt Whitman’s poem “O Captain! My Captain!” that I first heard in “Dead
Poets Society” came to mind. It seems apt on this day of learning that Tim has
died. I'll share the first and last stanza:
O Captain! my Captain! our
fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d
every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the
bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the
steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not
answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my
arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe
and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the
victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
