Man Fondly Remembers Chris, A Well-Known Alton Person, Who Left Behind Many Friends

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This letter writer has asked to remain anonymous, but he wanted to share his story of Chris, who was found deceased this week in the First Presbyterian Church parking lot. Riverbender.com continues with another story about Chris on Saturday).

Someone we all knew died this week, although you may not have known her name. If you lived in the Riverbend area, I’m certain that you walked or drove by her many times over the past 30 years, but whether you truly saw her may be in doubt. For years, I didn’t see her either. Yet we all knew her as the woman with the artificial leg that limped through town pushing the baby carriage carrying all her possessions. You may have given her money, or you may have given her grief. I suspect that, like all of us, she deserved both at varying times.

I want you to know this: Her name was Chris, and she was my friend.

On Monday morning, Chris showed me a discarded curtain that she had found and remarked on how beautiful it was. She asked me to neatly fold it before putting it into her carriage. Later that evening, she unfolded that drapery and laid down upon it in a secluded corner of a church parking lot in Alton. She never woke up.

Chris’ obituary will understandably be concise and will thereby miss the most important parts of who she was. Something about that just doesn’t seem right, so if you’ll be a little patient with me, allow me to commit her story to human memory and add her to the catalog of Alton characters that have made this city unique. Let me tell you some things about Chris that you didn’t know.

If you suddenly found yourself homeless in Alton, sooner or later you came to Chris. For part of her life, she lived beneath an overhanging roof in front of an abandoned storefront on Belle Street across from the bus station. She called it “her place”. Others of her community came upon her there.

They may have been there to share news, a few beers, some stories, or a cigarette, or it might have been to share a blanket during the coldest of winter nights. Chris was like that. Unless she was down to her last pack of cigarettes, she was happy to share even if only to have contact with another human being, to momentarily dispel the loneliness of life on the street. If you brought her food, she expected you to sit and share it with her, and with it, to share your stories and hers. A few days before she died, some leftover pasta from a sports picnic was thoughtfully donated to her. She shared that too. I was there when, hungry though she was, she gave it away to two other men who may have been hungrier than her. When I pressed her, she said she didn’t feel like eating due to some stomach cramps. I realize now only in retrospect that she was likely undergoing the early stages of heat stroke that would take her life a few days later.

Of all the things that could have ended Chris’ life, this was the last I suspected. But those of us that knew her, knew that she made bad choices. However, we also knew that there was something thrust upon her at birth that was not her choice and led directly to her life, and eventual death on the street. Chris was burdened with a common mental illness. Her family pursued a diagnosis as early as age 7, but it would not come until reportedly much later in life. Her illness affects 4 out of every 100 people and is severe in more than 3 quarters of them according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Moreover, it’s only one of a handful of conditions that make living in what you or I would think of as “normal” society challenging for many.

You’ll note that I’ve not named the disease nor voiced Chris’ last name. I live in a normal society. That means that I play by certain rules and the rules state that privacy is a dignity granted in death even if dignity itself was not granted in life. Chris hated those rules, and I hate to add to the secrecy that further stigmatizes mental health. But know this: Although called “mental disorders”, these are primarily physical diseases that may be caused by only a slight genetic mutation. There but for the grace of God, go we.

I want that to sink in because, when looking from the outside-in, we might judge that those on the street are there because of their addictions. But even in my limited experience sitting with some in that community something else is far more obvious. For many, the addictions may be the result of self-medicating against a much larger obstacle, a preexisting condition that was an unwanted card, randomly dealt.

Chris and I talked of her disease by speaking of the “sleeping pills” that the doctor gave her that quieted the stresses of living on the street just long enough for her to find some brief respite. They gave her the ability to sleep at night in places that most of us would not have ventured even while wide awake in mid-day. But they, nor we, were strong enough to save her.

Chris was 53 years old when she died, but she looked much older. She was survived by three children. I learned with great sadness today, that two of them are also on the street in another city far from Alton because such debilitating mental illness often cruelly runs in families.

I was not Chris’ only friend. I came to know her only six months ago because I started as a volunteer at the Overnight Warming Center of Alton, which is a pop-up shelter that your neighbors activate when the temperature drops to 20 degrees or below. I discovered there that Chris and the 35 or so other people on the streets in Alton had many friends. For what it’s worth, some of our friends in that community say we are underestimating the number by half and that there may be as many as 70 people wandering the streets with no safe place to rest in our small town. The good news is that there is an equally quiet undercurrent of friends eager to help.

It turns out that Chris had so many friends in town that multiple Alton churches have volunteered to provide a memorial service immediately upon hearing of her death. On the surface, she would have hated that, but even as she said that to you, you would see the devious twinkle in her eye, put there by the mere thought that someone else was thinking of her. Ironically, she was full of life in that way. The pastors have agreed to share resources to provide a single memorial service to be held at the First Presbyterian Church (on the corner of 4th & Alby Streets) on Tuesday, August 2. Lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m. Please know that you will be sharing that meal with those that often sat long with Chris. The service will start at 12:30 p.m. I hope you will be there. Every life deserves a celebration.

There’s one last quirky thing I wish to share about Chris before I let you go: She liked word-finder puzzles. These are found cheaply enough in paperback books from the dollar store, so some of us tried to keep a regular supply coming to her. A couple of days before her death, I gave her an “inspirational” version in a misguided attempt to reach her at a different level. The book was full of quotes that she could find one word at a time. She hated it. Although she told me it was the hardest one that I had ever given her, I found it earlier this week in her baby carriage alongside her lifeless body, nearly completed. She was only a few words short of finishing this quote, taken from the words of Benjamin Franklin:

“Human happiness is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.”

We have all been blessed with little advantages. Chris had an enormous disadvantage that she never understood, that sent her spiraling into a world that most of us never see and may even scorn for our lack of sight. Yet her life had worth. She saved other lives simply by teaching those who were newly homeless how to be without a home in a world that demands one. For my part, she taught me things I would have never seen within the limited worldview I had before I met her. My life is greater for knowing her, and lesser now that she is gone.

Chris never found the last few words of the “human happiness” puzzle while she was alive. Perhaps she will find them in death. Sleep well and without fear tonight, Chris. We loved you.

If you would like to volunteer at the Overnight Warming Center in Alton, you may reach out to them on Facebook. You will come to know unique people who are unlike those you may have met in the remainder of your life, and in the knowing, your life will be forever enriched.

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