By Alexandra Sangster
People at the Drop-In die all the time. And we who work here — we don’t always know that they’ve died, at least not straight away. Sometimes it might take weeks.
Someone will ring and tell us the news. A relative might turn up (though usually not), or the police will arrive. And we mourn their deaths.
We hold a funeral, and participants tell stories and light candles, and then we all sing: Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In.
In memory of David, who died alone.Credit: AFP
But recently we heard the news that another of our own had been found, after a welfare check, in his flat, surrounded by his towers of books. And I — for the first time, in all these years, with all this dying — felt a kind of burning anger, and also a kind of falling.
“This job is too hard,” I heard myself say. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
For this man who died — who was tall, with his hair pulled back in a permanent ponytail, and who once found a ring in the gutter and wore it like a talisman of the one ring that would bind us all — this man was my friend. And he was too young to die.
And he died all alone.
Once upon a time, there was a boy born in France. He was the eldest of 18 children, and he wanted to be a priest. But apparently he wasn’t very book-smart and kept failing his exams. So, at the grand age of 16, he gave up his priestly ambitions and took to the streets.
“I will be a pilgrim,” he declared, and he began travelling from one church to another, clothed in rags. He became known by many as the Beggar of Rome. What food he had, he shared. His short life was hard and holy. And when he died, after hours of prayer, the people declared him a saint.
Benedict Joseph Labre was canonised by Pope Leo XIII in 1881. His liturgical feast is celebrated on April 16. Saint Benedict became the patron saint of the homeless and of all those who take pilgrimage — and also, as an added extra, the patron saint of unmarried men.
Recently, I was walking across a muddy paddock with another minister, and we were talking about funerals. She said, “I can’t do them anymore. I just can’t — because I can feel all the other funerals inside me, and they’re all still there, concertinaed and contained.” And I knew what she meant.
I remembered a funeral from not that long ago, where a mother had died from addictions and had not been found for three weeks.
As I stood there, trying to hold all the grief swelling up inside the church — the grief of this mother’s mother and of her daughter, only 17 — I realised that I, too, was going under. And I had to physically force myself to the surface of the story, so that we all didn’t go down together.
David, my friend, was part of three main communities here in St Kilda: Sacred Heart, the UCA Engagement Hub, and the Baptists. We held a funeral for him — all together. Everyone came. And our friend who died alone will be farewelled like a fallen elf soldier from his beloved Lord of the Rings.
And later — even though I am a Protestant minister, which means that technically I don’t get to believe in saints — later, I will light a candle for Saint Benedict, and for all those who have nowhere to lay their heads, and for all those who die alone.
Alexandra Sangster is a minister, facilitator and Darebin councillor.
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