Nowhere to lay her head

Preface: The Register Guard reports this morning that the family of Annette Montero has filed a lawsuit against Sanipac and the driver of their truck that crushed Ms. Montero in her sleeping bag on the morning of Aug. 26, 2019. Below is the piece I wrote about this tragedy and printed in the church newsletter a few days later. We held a memorial service for Ms. Montero at First Christian Church a month after her death. Over 100 people, including members of her family, were in attendance.

No one knows her name, at least at the moment.  The police officer asked me if she was deaf.  I thought it was an odd question, until I realized why he asked it.  She was a new guest at our Sunday morning breakfast.  She didn’t quite understand the way things worked, or maybe didn’t care, bringing her bicycle inside only to be told that she couldn’t do that and then walking past all of the other guests in line to get her food.  No one objected.  Maybe they understood that there are times when you need to give someone benefit of the doubt after a hard night on the street.  

She didn’t interact much with others, seemed at times to be in a trance, just staring in the distance and hardly moving.  I suppose lack of sleep will do that to a person.  Though she arrived with a bicycle, she didn’t leave with one.  Someone else left with it.  That happens a lot when you don’t have means to secure your belongings.  She also arrived with a down sleeping bag full of holes, feathers floating around her like fairy dust.  Our janitor, bless him, brought out a garbage bag for her so that she could hopefully contain the feathers.  She did not especially like that idea, as if that was somehow containing her spirit, floating freely with the wind.  

Nowhere to go, bicycle already gone, she remained in the parking lot all day and on into the evening.  The security video shows her meandering about, sitting on the curb, randomly moving some of her few belongings from one spot to another.  Our security patrol asked her to move on.  She asked them how she would go about renting a parking space.  We have places to park cars, why not a place to park people?  Around 9 pm the video shows her lying down near the bicycle cages of our neighbor.  There she stayed for two hours before getting up and wandering around a bit and then eventually down the alley and out of sight.  Did she move because of the person who appeared to interrupt her sleep?  That happens a lot when you don’t have a bed of your own.  

Someone found her the next morning in the lot next to ours, still in her sleeping bag, feathers scattered about, aimlessly floating in the wind.  Tire tracks indicated a large truck, our video suggested a garbage truck on its early morning rounds, the kind that makes loud beeping noises when it backs up to warn any wayward spirits of impending danger.  “Hit and run” they said in the news, but running does not describe a lumbering truck slowly moving down the dark alley. Did she hear and not care?  Or maybe she was just too tired from nights wandering the street with nowhere to sleep.  

“Birds have nests and foxes have dens,” said Jesus, “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” The difference between then and now is that Jesus didn’t have to contend with 20-ton garbage trucks that threatened to crush worn-out sleepers.  Instead they crucified him.  Crucified, crushed, what’s the difference?  Wasn’t his death supposed to make all other sacrifice unnecessary?  He also said, “I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat.”  So did we, but what she needed was a safe place to sleep.  I weep for the woman whose name we do not know.  I pray for the many others without dens or nests and that death for lack of a place to sleep will be no more because we found a place for each person to lay their head.  Until then, I am haunted by feathers.