Luck and Life and Compassion

You have your own home or a luxury loft apartment. You drive a relatively new car that speaks to your status. You dress in clothes that you think flatter your and put forth the image you want to show the world. You have a well paying job and your cat likes you.
We lost our home to the bank because we still owed $8,500 after twenty years of mortgage payments and we no longer had income or savings. We worked hard during our working years, often foregoing vacations for business interests. We lived frugally, took care of ourselves saved some from every paycheck and invested in company matched 401K plans. All gone. We used up our cash and our credit trying to support ourselves but feel that one of the unintended consequences that occurred when the state of New Hampshire agreed to allow health insurance companies to use the age and health of a companies employees to set the group policy rate is to encourage companies to hire only healthy younger people and thus keep health insurance costs under control. So we are unable to find employment.
At the beginning of 2013 we lost our job as church sextons with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester, NH because we had a financial dispute with one of their members. And the church decided to stand behind their member because “we need Paul’s money” (spoken by Webster Anderson). It did matter one bit to the UUCM leadership that Paul Doolittle had engineered an incredible theft from Lynn Shackelford. “We need Paul’s money.”
Well the members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester New Hampshire got their want except it didn’t cost Paul Doolittle a penny out of his own pocket.
So we’re homeless. We bought ourselves a derelict 32′ class A motorhome because we want to own our own home. We worked hard. We saved. But because we’re gay we’re second class citizens and not entitled to equal protection under the law. So we live on other people’s property. We try to find empty parking lots at closed stores. If we use an active property we park in a far corner and try not to be around when the owner needs the space for his customers.
Today we needed to be at the Elliot at River’s Edge for a wound check and a consultation on a leg brace Lynn needs because a total joint replacementtotal joint replacement can only do so much when your leg was crushed in a motorcycle-automobile collision.
More to follow. I gotta fold laundry.
We have an arrangement with Elliot security and if we have an early morning appointment we spend the night before in a far corner of the parking lot and we leave when we’re done with the doctor. We had a previous encounter with Elliot security when Lynn’s first total joint replacement the one on the good leg took longer than expected to recover to the point where he could leave the hospital.
Anyway. This last visit was for a wound check with the surgeon and a consultation with the guy that does the braces. The scheduled start time was 1:30 PM so we had plenty of time to get over to River’s Edge and we arrived about one-half of one hour early had a snack and headed into the Urgent Care facility. We saw the Elliot Security car coming around the corner so we waited to say Hi! to the security guard and witnessed the most amazing thing. After watching the scene play out we realized that some concerned citizen had seen us parking our home, the 32″ class A motorhome with motorcycle trailer attached and called security to report us. This responsible women had waited to point our home out to the guard so that he wouldn’t confuse our home with the SUVs parked in the parking lot and then continued into River’s Edge. What is it with people? I’ve owned four properties in New Hampshire, paid my taxes and lived in Manchester for over a quarter of a century. I lost my home through my being uninsured due to previously existing conditions and I’m doing my best to support myself. If you need to feel superior to a couple of guys making do with an antique RV in noisy brightly lit parking lots, keep it to yourself. You don’t have to telephone everyone in sight to point us out. Better yet, go get a life of your own.