Friends gathered to lay flowers on a park bench outside the CCNV shelter and to remember the woman who died there on Sunday, June 7. Someone set an umbrella on the bench, because the woman they remembered as Page, or Paige, or Renee Paige sat outside on the bench in all kinds of weather. She sometimes spoke about having AIDS.
People offered different versions of her story. A few said that when she stayed inside the shelter she was stigmatized by others because of her disease. Shelter official Bernard Robinson said that though she stayed at CCNV during the winter, she moved to another shelter when the winter beds closed. Robinson said he thought she had a place at the John Young Center.
However, friends said when she wasn’t in the hospital, she slept on the CCNV bench.
“She didn’t want shelter,” said homeless activist and CCNV resident Eric Sheptock. “She wanted housing.” In spite of her failing health, remembered one friend from the shelter, Kenneth Brant, “she was fun. She laughed. She was a loving person.”
Others remembered her generosity, how shortly before she died, she bought a birthday cake for a man who said he hadn’t had one since he was a child.
Sometimes she drank to cope. She knew she was dying. “On Sunday, when we went to church, she said ‘light a candle and pray for me,’” said shelter resident Clarissa Coates.
Mary Ann Luby, an outreach worker for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless said she hoped a “root cause study” would be done to find out more about the woman’s life and death.”
“Where was she going for health care?” asked Luby. “Were efforts made to get her into a place where she could die with dignity?”
On a recent evening, an informal memorial service unfolded on the sidewalk. Brant wheeled his wheelchair up to the bench and joined hands with others to say a prayer. He said he trusted her suffering was over.
Another friend, Lashawn Lewis, studied the flowers and shook her head.
“She deserved so much better.”
