Notes from the curb

Jean and I | January 2008

L

ast Wednesday I took Jean to the doctor.  She didn’t want to go, but I was worried about her.  She had been sick with a terrible cough for weeks.  Her bedraggled look was getting worse, and she wasn’t answering the phone.  She even told me that she had lost her appetite, and that was huge — though when I called to see if she needed food, she did ask for milk… and ice cream.  (She didn’t like the little cartons from Meals on Wheels… and because she was diabetic they didn’t give her ice cream.  Jean loved ice cream!)

We sat at the Dorchester House clinic for three hours.  It was a one-stop-shop deal where Jean was seen by the doctor, given her prescriptions and had a tooth extracted.  She seemed to know a lot of folks at the clinic, and they were genuinely interested in how she was.  The young Latino woman who checked us in was her former neighbor, and she smiled as she saw Jean approach.

If I were to see Jean on the street and without knowing her, I probably wouldn’t smile.  She had long stringy gray strands of hair and a round face with bulging blue eyes.  Her body was misshapen by the ravages of breast cancer, a stroke, arthritis and years of overeating.  She looked many years older than 63.  She looked on the outside how I think many folks look on the inside.  I often thought she looked like the creature Gollum from Lord of the Rings.  But just like Gollum, Jean had been someone else before becoming the person I knew sitting at that clinic — a person with a heart, soul, dreams, hopes, fears and a desire to be known and cared for… beloved.

I first met Jean about five years ago when our mutual friend Claire felt that Jean would enjoy our women’s Bible study.  Jean was single and had spent her adult life caring for her mother — who had recently passed away, leaving Jean very lonely.  Jean then lived in a second floor apartment of a triple-decker house right by the subway.  I would drop her off in the evening after Bible study and carry her books up to the second floor landing for her.

Jean knew a lot about the Bible.  She was an avid reader and loved to listen to Christian radio.  She often would have listened to two or three church services before I even picked her up for Sunday morning worship.  She loved the music of the Gaithers.  I got her a CD player and tried to find some gospel CD’s… or hymns.  Since we use mostly contemporary Christian music in our worship services, Jean was always glad when we threw in a hymn or two.

One of our outreach ministries involves a food pantry and taking folks shopping.  I remember Jean getting on the motorized cart at Wal-Mart and riding all over the place until she finally drove herself into a corner in the book aisle and needed help getting into reverse.  Sometimes I would also carry her groceries and other shopping items for her, though I usually had to take out a few of the boxes of cookies that Jean would sneak into her bag.  As a diabetic, she knew she wasn’t supposed to have them, but she loved them… so sometimes I left one in.

Jean had pets — two dogs and four cats.  She loved them, and they loved her.  They weren’t very well cared for by most folks’ standards of hygiene, but they were loved and fed.  She would never leave them alone, not even for one night.

Jean often invited folks to our community meals and Bible study.  She really had an evangelistic heart.  She just couldn’t understand why so many weren’t interested in church anymore.  But several of her friends and neighbors started coming by the Jubilee House on a regular basis… all due to Jean’s persistent invitations.  Jean was very committed to her friends.  She always asked for prayer for them and would take them little gifts and visit on occasion.  When a former neighbor, an elderly woman named Rose, was moved to a nursing home, we would go and visit her after church.  I was sometimes “too busy” to stay but would drop Jean off and she would take a taxi home.  Jean brought one of the men of our church to the nursing home to pray with Rose and make sure that she had received Christ as her savior, just to make sure her friend knew the Lord.  This is just one of many examples of Jean’s witness, a witness that often went unnoticed by the world.

She often worried about the violence in our neighborhood and what she saw on television.  Thankfully, she never experienced it herself.  She did have her share of problems, though, as we all do…one of hers was holding onto too many things.  Several times throughout the years, we enlisted energetic young people to help de-clutterize Jean’s house.  The teams would spend days hauling trash bags of old food, junk and papers out to the dumpster… only to have similar items reappear months later for the next cleaning crew.  Professional friends have told me that hoarding is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  I always felt it was Jean’s way of insulating herself from the loneliness she felt and attempting to fill some of the voids in her life.

When I get home from my visits with Jean, I look around at all my “stuff” and see what voids I am trying to fill and what I need to let go of as well.

Jean loved to paint.  She had a small easel and paints that were sitting in the corner.  She had long given up painting or crafts, but still had all the equipment… just in case the mood ever struck her.  Once while visiting Jean I found a lovely pencil sketch of her as a young woman with bright eyes and curly hair.

But lately she had not felt well enough to do much of anything; a nagging flu and cold kept her down.  Her friends and church family were worried about her, thus initiating the trip to the doctor.  She did not like going to the doctor.

Last Sunday, Jean didn’t come to church.  It was a bitter cold January morning, and she didn’t pick up the phone when I called her.  Often when she wasn’t feeling well, she just didn’t make the effort to get to the phone buried in the corner of her living room.  I tried to remind myself to call her again.

Monday was the Martin Luther King Jr holiday, and I was busy on Monday morning welcoming our new group of students and moving them into the Jubilee House for spring semester.  Monday ran into Tuesday, and Bill and I were off for three days for a Salvation Army officers’ retreat… I had folks holding down the fort at our ministry and left knowing things were in good hands.

Tuesday night during dinner at the retreat, my cell phone vibrated.  It was Leanne, one of our young adult volunteers.  I assumed she was calling to ask where the Bible study books were or who was making the brownies for dinner.

Instead, she called to say, “Mrs. Dunigan, I have some disturbing news.  My mom went to pick up Jean for Bible study and they found her dead in her apartment.”

I was speechless for a moment and then made the call to confirm the fact that indeed Jean was dead.  Ann had gone to pick her up for Bible study and was also contacted by our friends the Dewey’s, who had somehow been contacted by Jean’s lifeline service, since she had not picked up the phone in a couple days.  Ann went in with the landlord and the detectives and found Jean in her living room.

Nothing could be done right away, since we had to wait and submit to the investigation and the authorities and attempt to find Jean’s next of kin.  Yesterday we were able to contact Jean’s cousin.  But the last time she had seen her was at Jean’s mother’s funeral six years ago.  We are working together to plan Jean’s memorial service.

While at the retreat I took time to pray and read Scripture and ask God about Jean and His love for her…I was angry that she had died alone at home.  He reminded me that she wasn’t alone.  He was always with her.

The Psalms tell me that “the Lord sets the lonely in families.”  Jean was a member of our family here at the Jubilee House… maybe like the old maiden aunt.

I also am reminded that “the grass withers and the flowers fade but the word of the Lord lasts forever.”  Jean now has faded, but I write this to remember her and honor her memory and that the living word of God was such an important part of her life.  By putting what little I know of her on paper, I want to do my part of help her memory remain.  The world will rush by and not even think twice about her or miss her.

God knows the hairs on my head (gray as well — though regularly colored!), and he sees each sparrow that falls to the ground.  That’s an awful lot of sparrows.  I see myself as a sparrow, and I am so glad that He loves me.  Jean was a sparrow too… one with a broken wing, not very colorful and easily missed.  But God did not miss her, and I am comforted by the fact that now she is with Him and he loves her very much.  I am sure that she is enjoying not being lonely or misunderstood or ignored, but being eternally loved by Jesus the lover of her soul.

And maybe she’s even having ice cream.

Writer: Major Sue Dunigan and her husband Bill have a passion for people and have focused on urban ministry and incarnational evangelism and discipleship.

The Dunigans were appointed to Boston over 12 years ago to begin urban church planting. They serve the Lord at the Jubilee House in Dorchester living and working in a stately 23 room Victorian mansion in the heart of Codman Square. Dorchester is a high risk area of Boston with rampant violent crime, drug and gang issues. It is to this neighborhood they are called to be a part of and to minister. They live there in intentional Christian Community currently with 16 other people, 2 golden retrievers, 1 cat and a fish.

They are currently the hosts of the Gordon Boston Urban Semester program and have housed over 100 college students over the past 12 years.

Sue enjoys teaching, organizing and public speaking. She is an amateur actress and singer and enjoys entertaining and cooking for a cast of thousands. She also has developed a love of gardening and growing things.

Sue loves a organizing a good party and if there is nothing happening she’s willing to find a reason to throw one. She is the house mother, pastor and resident “cruise director” at the Jubilee House.

The Dunigans are two people on a journey together learning to follow God and love him passionately. It is Sue’s desire that men and women know that they are beloved by God and to teach them how to know Him intimately.

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