Did a good thing
Our office got a family of folks that needed
things for Christmas due to loosing everything.
Originally, I did my part like always, just got
the gift I drew and put it in a gift bag and gave it to the person
coordinating.
However Friday Morning one of the people helping was ill and I said I'd help them take it in. I didn't realize at first we were going to drop stuff off directly at the families places. At first I felt a little odd, didn't know how the person would react, or if the little ones would be home.
However I realized it was a school day. So we ran out to south Raleigh (I think, still don't know where I am going yet) and introduced ourselves to the guy. The story of his plight was a bit heart wrenching to begin with. Good job, strong family, and then wife gets hooked up on drugs. She steals from everyone, including his boss (construction) and gets him fired. She then takes everything they have and vanishes.
He moves to NC to live with relatives who take one look at him when he gets there and tells him to take a hike, they don't want the kids there.
He goes for help with the guvment, and the guvment says 'sure, but we have to send your kids to foster care' because he's the man, and men aren't ever considered primary care givers or be allowed to stay somewhere.
He finds the Triangle Inter-faith organization that the local churches run and they get him set up. One of the church members gets him a driver job at local bus routes and off he goes.
To be honest I never thought about it much when we bought the gift, I just wanted the 4 year old to have a nice christmas and got him some nice clothes and a book.
When we got there he said he'd put the stuff in the closet to hide it from them. We kinda laughed. There were 20 people in our office involved in this. We had a minivan full of gifts.
Stacie and Theresa brought the first group in and he was excited, then hugh brought an armful in and a bike for his 9 year old, then I came in with about 6 bags on one arm and then we brought in all the food we'd collected as well. He was extremely emotional, it was hard not to cry with him there. He was so thankful and wanted to try and tell us how his kids were settling in, and his 9 year old had just been accepted into the gifted program.
You could tell he was just someone who got screwed by life. He was well spoken, very happy, and was a hugging everyone.. I didn't see him give Hugh a hug but when he came over to me (he was probably 6'4" or something) he took a look at me and said 'you're not too big to hug!' and gave me a bear hug. It took a lot of control not to cry because it was a combination of feeling like crap for doing well vs. empathizing with him for being able to give his three little ones a wonderful christmas.
Kinda made me remember what this holiday is really for, vs. everything yous ee on TV
However Friday Morning one of the people helping was ill and I said I'd help them take it in. I didn't realize at first we were going to drop stuff off directly at the families places. At first I felt a little odd, didn't know how the person would react, or if the little ones would be home.
However I realized it was a school day. So we ran out to south Raleigh (I think, still don't know where I am going yet) and introduced ourselves to the guy. The story of his plight was a bit heart wrenching to begin with. Good job, strong family, and then wife gets hooked up on drugs. She steals from everyone, including his boss (construction) and gets him fired. She then takes everything they have and vanishes.
He moves to NC to live with relatives who take one look at him when he gets there and tells him to take a hike, they don't want the kids there.
He goes for help with the guvment, and the guvment says 'sure, but we have to send your kids to foster care' because he's the man, and men aren't ever considered primary care givers or be allowed to stay somewhere.
He finds the Triangle Inter-faith organization that the local churches run and they get him set up. One of the church members gets him a driver job at local bus routes and off he goes.
To be honest I never thought about it much when we bought the gift, I just wanted the 4 year old to have a nice christmas and got him some nice clothes and a book.
When we got there he said he'd put the stuff in the closet to hide it from them. We kinda laughed. There were 20 people in our office involved in this. We had a minivan full of gifts.
Stacie and Theresa brought the first group in and he was excited, then hugh brought an armful in and a bike for his 9 year old, then I came in with about 6 bags on one arm and then we brought in all the food we'd collected as well. He was extremely emotional, it was hard not to cry with him there. He was so thankful and wanted to try and tell us how his kids were settling in, and his 9 year old had just been accepted into the gifted program.
You could tell he was just someone who got screwed by life. He was well spoken, very happy, and was a hugging everyone.. I didn't see him give Hugh a hug but when he came over to me (he was probably 6'4" or something) he took a look at me and said 'you're not too big to hug!' and gave me a bear hug. It took a lot of control not to cry because it was a combination of feeling like crap for doing well vs. empathizing with him for being able to give his three little ones a wonderful christmas.
Kinda made me remember what this holiday is really for, vs. everything yous ee on TV
Posted: Fri - December 19, 2003 at 10:54 AM |
Quick Links
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Comments powered by
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jun 07, 2004 11:27 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jun 07, 2004 11:27 AM