Help With A Loss
I used to work as a nonprofit social worker in schools. This job gave me some pretty heavy PTSD. I have very, very few stories about this job that aren’t deeply messed up. If you have one of me in your school, your district is probably low on cash and has a high homeless population. My job was half counseling, half resource management, and a little bit of after school clubs and events for good measure.
I had a boy come up to me who was on a sensitive list. Most of my cases were. That’s why I was there. But anyway, he comes in and he asks me if I could come to his house and help with his grandma because he was scared. I often made house visits. Sometimes even with Child Protective Services. But this was often just to drop off food and make sure that no one was getting hit. This particular boy lived in the back of an old Ford minivan with some tents set up around it.
He lived there with his grandma, his two sisters, and his mom. Basically, as he said, he hadn’t been back home since it had gotten cold, so he was sheltering. I had called up the shelters for him a few times, but I won’t go into that mess here. But anyway, I get there to check out his concerns—and I’ll never forget what I found. Turns out Grandma isn’t just unwell. She’s no longer alive. So he starts asking me if I could call the authorities and an ambulance. I agree.
After I finish my paperwork when school ends, I find him, the van, the tents, the sisters, and the mom standing around Grandma’s lifeless body trying to process what was going on. Her body was curled up in the back seat under a ton of blankets. It was a harsh winter day. So I call the ambulance, and then I go home and cry. Just cry a lot, and vomit.
Then, about a few days later, the kid comes back and wants to know if I could in any way help with the funeral expenses. So I call my boss. She says no we can’t. But she does give me a list of a bunch of churches in the area. I call around. I plead my case to everyone I call without breaking any privacy laws. No dice. I was living in a Mormon halfway house at the time and the landlady liked me. So I asked her. Thankfully, she said yes. She and the church agreed to take care of the arrangements.
We cremated the Grandma because it was cheaper. We all had a nice religious get together with everybody. I then got a nice thank you letter from the kid, and his mother met and got to talk to some nice and very supportive people. When it was all over, I went home for some more crying and vomiting. And I still haven’t gotten over this situation to this day.