228 homeless people who have died in Dublin and Belfast over the past 35 years were remembered this week, writes John Downes.
In some cases, their real identity is never known. Yet, for every name of a deceased homeless person read out at a memorial service in Dublin yesterday, there was a story, a memory, of a life often cut short. Charities such as the Simon Communities of Ireland and the Depaul trust, who helped co-ordinate the service, know of 228 homeless people - 175 men and 53 women - who have died over the past 35 years in Dublin and Belfast.
Due to improvements in data collection, they have also established that 51 homeless people using their services have died in the last 18 months, 45 of them in Dublin. But both organisations readily admit that the overall figure is probably significantly higher.
For some, the message is stark: when you die on the streets, or in emergency accommodation, somehow your life, and your passing, do not count as much as those of the person who passes you by.
With Christmas approaching - paradoxically, a time when the issue of homelessness registers most on the public consciousness, but also a time of great isolation - those who gathered at the Unitarian church on St Stephen's Green yesterday simply wanted to remember.
The cold and the loneliness get to you most when you are homeless, according to Finglas native Suzanne Farrell (38). She has been in this situation since her late life partner, John - a glazier by trade - contracted pneumonia around six years ago and they were given just a week's notice by a landlord to leave their home.
She had been drinking heavily in the years prior to that; firstly, as she tells it, to numb the pain of a miscarriage which occurred when she was 21, and married and living in the UK. Gradually, her drinking got worse, leading her to lose her job as a care assistant and to return home. Despite huge and continuing support from her family, she could not conquer her addiction. John, her partner of 10 years, was also an alcoholic. They used to share a spot behind Boyer's department store, in Dublin city centre, but he died in hospital two years ago. She is now in housing supported by the Simon Community, and has been off drink for 16 months, despite a "few little slips along the way". Previously, it was not unusual for her to drink two or three bottles of vodka a day.
"If you're homeless and you're on the streets, it's the loneliness that is the worst. If you're a woman like me, you have nobody to protect you," she says.
The raw pain of John's death, and that of another friend, Noel, who died on her last birthday, peppers her conversation about the service. It is as if, despite her progress, she can never forget how life on the streets has impacted on her.
Her friend, John (Jack) Ryan (53), is a keen poet who first became homeless at the age of 15. He had, he says, no choice in the matter, moving to the streets with his mother and stepfather. He is now in what he terms his second stint of homelessness, having previously worked.
His vice is alcohol, although he has dabbled in heroin in the past. But he says of his time when he had a "regular life" that he realises only now that he never dealt with his addiction, and the traumas of a "horrific childhood of alcohol abuse". This second phase of homelessness has lasted 17 years, he says, nine of which were spent on the streets of Birmingham.
He has been robbed and beaten up, and remembers the fear of going to sleep in emergency accommodation afraid that his clothing and possessions would be taken. He is currently in rehab, and hopes to get a place on a community employment scheme. "My long-term goal would be complete independence, to have a place I can call home," he says. "But one thing I've learned from Simon is that we're all kind of interdependent . . . homelessness is not just about having a roof over your head, it's far more than that.
"The longer you are homeless, the more problems go with that. What happens to you is you become invisible. I have felt homeless for a long, long time. Even when I left Simon and had a regular life, I still felt kind of homeless. That's the step I'm learning about today, figuring out where I fit in."
Both Suzanne and Jack remember well the people they have got to know on the streets, and who have since passed on. Jack has lost his mother and his stepfather, as well as his brother, who took his own life. Suzanne's partner, John, loved a laugh and was a kind and caring person. He had his problems, but she will never love anyone like she did him. "John is my higher power," she says simply. "When he died, my life ended."
YESTERDAY'S SERVICE INCLUDED a roll call of all of the first names of those who have died, and a candle was lit in memory of each person. There was also a procession, in which three people brought up the homeless person's constants: a sleeping bag, a flask, and a scarf and mittens.
Pat Greene of the Dublin Simon Community says it is hard to generalise about the types of people who become homeless. It could, he says, happen to anyone. He has personal experience of one service user who was a GP in another life; it is also not unheard of to find barristers, solicitors and the likes sharing hostel accommodation with those from socially deprived backgrounds.
Sometimes, their deaths are related to the weather, or their long-term addiction to drugs or alcohol. There is, says Greene, a need for continued resources, and to speed up access to services such as detox beds.
Crucially, for Jack and Suzanne, it is also essential to look at the reasons for someone being homeless. Jack points out that he was not responsible for being homeless at 15 and, in time, he turned to alcohol to help ease what was a bleak situation. Trying to get a job when you have no address, or only that of a hostel, can be almost impossible, he adds.
"People see young men and women on the street with cups in their hands. Do they ever think, how did they end up like that? They could have had an argument with their family and been thrown out," Suzanne says. "Just the other day I saw a 15-year-old girl on the Ha'penny bridge with a child in her arms. People were passing her by."
Speaking of those who have died, and yesterday's service, she adds: "At the end of the day, they were human beings, they may have been alcoholics, or drug addicts, and some of it may have been their own fault . . . but they were humans. For God's sake, give them some dignity. They were someone's son or daughter."
Since the Dublin Simon Community plot in Glasnevin cemetery received its first burial in October 1978, 59 people have been buried there. The organisation has managed to establish the names of all of those buried, bar one who was buried as "unknown". For Suzanne and Jack, as for so many of those gathered at yesterday's service, these people may be gone. But perhaps for the first time, all were counted and remembered yesterday.