This last year or so has been challenging, to say the least. My health is deteriorating so quickly it seems. It’s been one issue after another. My friends tell me that I am being pessimistic when I talk about the feeling of being at the end of my life’s journey, but it’s true. I’ve reached this point where I can clearly see that my time remaining here on this planet is shortened by medical concerns that never seem to stop popping up.
My grandkids are 18 months and 50 days old respectively and the reality is it’s highly improbable that I’ll see them graduate high school, let alone college, which saddens me. A friend once predicted I had another 25 years in the tank. Maybe, but after these last two years or so the odds have shifted and now I wouldn’t even take that bet.
As the coronavirus has taken more and more people’s lives who are younger than me, I’ve started to wonder about my lifelong propensity to always be long-range planning for everything in life. It hit me that those half million people who died so far had long-range plans, too, that unfortunately they won’t get to see fulfilled.
So after thinking about the movie the “Bucket List,” I decided to make mine, but I’ve had to accelerate the timetable because of my fear of the end. At 70, does it make sense to say in 2025 I want to go to Africa or China? When I was 25, 35, 45 or even 55, that kind of strategy would make more sense. But now, after seeing the world from a senior’s point of view with health issues including surviving a severe bout of COVID, my thinking has shifted to, “The future is now.”
[Read more: Random Acts of Kindness: A birthday I never thought I would see]
And part of that shift is not delaying anything that I dreamed of doing. One of those lifelong dreams was to visit all 50 states by the time I am laid to rest. After doing a count, I realized I was way behind with no hope of catching up.
I didn’t know it, but a random act of kindness was on the way: a new/old friend stepped in. We had gone to the same high school with about 4000 students here in D.C. and graduated the same year, but we never met until the night of our 50-year class reunion.
As I wrote about in “A Valentine for Valerie, One year later,” we ended up driving to Baltimore after the reunion for dinner after midnight to continue to catch up like we were long lost friends. (There’s no late-night dining in D.C. except fast food.) Along the way we talked and I found we shared the loss of a love one recently. Me my great friend and uber-supportive Valerie and her beloved Sherman. They were together for what, after listening to her, seemed like many happy years and almost the same amount of time as me and Val. Both died suddenly at home from strokes.
We traded loving stories about each of them and how crippling the loss still was. We both found solitude in meeting someone who completely understood that hole in our hearts that can never be filled. We rode around that city till almost daybreak before returning to the reunion site in Greenbelt for her car. It was as if I’d known her all along.
A few weeks later, she accepted my invitation to ride with me for support as I headed out to Skyline Drive to release balloons on Valerie’s Birthday, as I have done each October 2nd since her passing. Along the way, I shared how Val and I planned to pool our resources and go places when she retired — never thinking I’d have to go it alone. Then I found out that when it comes to travel, my new friend was in another league. She has been to all 50 states, territories and most other countries around the world, some places multiple times. I was thinking, “Wait a minute, how could this be? I thought you were from a similar background as me.” Her dad was working class like mine, but she worked in historic preservation and urban planning and it took her to places I could only dream about.
So I began to intently listen to her travel stories as I asked hundreds of questions about places I never thought I’d see. When I was young I read atlases, encyclopedias (remember those?), and travel books about far off places. And I got to read more about those places at my work study job in the stacks of my college’s library. And her vivid answers had me glued to the IMAX 3D screen of my mind thinking, with my lack of any retirement or savings, I’ll still never get to see any of those places.
Once again the universe blessed me with a random act of kindness. She mentioned that she still worked as a consultant and suggested that with the miles and discounts she has access to — with her son and several siblings being high ranking corporate executives — that maybe I could tag along some time. Since October 2019, when scheduling permits, we’ve hit the road to some fun places that I never thought a formerly homeless person would ever get to see. In the past two years, we’ve been criss-crossing the country to get me to as many of the 50 states I haven’t visited in the time left on my game clock. And she’s kind of taken it on as her mission to get me there.
We were playing what would become our game— travel Jeopardy — when I chose “Famous Southern Cities” for $500 and mentioned that I’d never been to New Orleans. Of course, she’d been there many times. And just like that she said, “Let’s get both our shots and go.”
Then — bam! — in another random act of kindness, a large hotel chain came through with vouchers for a several-day stay from an issue we had on a previous trip to Miami (another place I hadn’t been). So we were off! Since we both don’t drink or gamble and we both hated the thought of being in big crowds during this pandemic, we set the goal of visiting after Mardi Gras.
In the past, I’d ask my friends and supporters who had the luxury of traveling, like the O’Brien’s, to bring me a fridge magnet back from each of the wonderful places they’d been. And they would — it seemed I’d been traveling through them and others. I had a whole section devoted to their family’s many travels. But after so many of you helped me get to Scotland for an international awards ceremony where I was nominated for, of all things, my writing, I started to compete for space on that fridge door.
[Read more: Random Acts of Kindness: From McDonald’s to Scotland]
Because of my work and my struggle to stay financially afloat I can’t miss many days of work, so we’ve kept our adventures to three to four days max. We planned a quick trip so I could check Louisiana off the states list and officially get that refrigerator magnet, which had become a passion.
I was both excited and anxious about traveling anywhere but the opportunity came and I wanted to see firsthand what Katrina had done to the city and the increase in homelessness it caused. (The official count rose by roughly 10,000 people after the storm, though is back down to below 2,000, according to the government.)
And it didn’t take long. On the way in from the airport, I saw the now infamous Superdome. Pictures of homeless people staying there and the inhumane conditions they endured flooded my mind as we rode in the taxi. My friend was pointing out the sights as we took the exit ramp for our downtown hotel. Then I started to see what I was looking for.
The tents of the homeless residents met us before the bottom of the exit ramp. It seems under the freeway was now the only prime real estate that homeless people didn’t have to battle developers for in the Crescent City.
During my brief visit, underpasses seemed to be the only public space people experiencing homelessness don’t have to fight for on a daily basis. Photo by Wendall Williams
As she took me around the area, in some places it looked as if Katrina had just left. I couldn’t believe that after this long of a time, select parts of the city weren’t getting the attention they obviously needed. Outside of tourist destinations like the French Quarter, I saw houses as well as large apartment buildings that were leaning over so far that I could get out the car and push them over myself. I wondered, “Why hasn’t the rest of the city rebounded?”
The answer seems quite obvious to me. Katrina is another tool in what has become the gentrification playbook in most cities today, big or small. She was the natural disaster version of a business improvement district and much quicker, moving up the change-time by many years. I think she saved developers millions in demolition costs. And then it hit me: Where’d the people go? Shipped all over the country was the answer, even to D.C. where many stayed at the National Guard Armory near RFK for months.
But a significant number of the working poor stayed and some joined the ranks of the homeless. You could easily see them living outside in tents everywhere, especially under the freeways dissecting the city.
So I had a chance through this random act of kindness to see an undoubtedly beautiful city and its many cultural sites. And I had unbelievable experiences. But what I couldn’t get out of my mind and what I took home with me is the vision of the many suffering homeless people who seem to be both invisible, and sometimes entertainment, to most tourists I encountered on my trip to the Big Easy.
