We felt as if we were throwing him every possible lifeline, yet he simply refused to grab hold. Because of his suggestion that the problem was geographical -- and because of his disruptive behavior at home -- we put him on a bus to Santa Barbara in March.
That is what happened. That is how Jake became part of the "homeless problem."
Every day I hear stories just like this one. Every day I must toss lifelines to those who've been abandoned, both by society and by the ones who should love them the most. Every day I see the pain and misery of life on the street etched into their faces, dimming the natural sparkle of their eyes, slowly blackening and snuffing out their souls. And every day I try to renew their faith in humanity just a bit, before they too throw themselves in front of a train, whether that train is running down a track of steel rails or is hidden within the liquid of a bottle, lurking at the bottom of a spoonful of heroin, or sneaking around inside a piece of crack... Suzanne's final words are the perhaps the most powerful in the piece:
In a sense, we're all homeless people on our way home. So let's be kind to those who journey along with us. Please keep throwing lifelines.
Jake Snyder with Orange Man, his award-winning painting" border="0"> Jake Snyder with Orange Man, his award-winning painting
(First Person is a weekly forum for personal musings and reflections from readers)
At 10:20 a.m. April 5, according to www.trainorders
That homeless pedestrian was my 28-year-old son, Jacob Snyder.
The accident yielded no news-media coverage. What little information I know was collected from long-
distance phone conversations and a Web site for train buffs.
What happened to Jake?
Rewind 10 years.
Jake, 18, is starting to blossom in art and music. I take him and his girlfriend, Bianca (now finishing a graduate degree at Yale University), to a holiday party at the home of my employer, the president of Ohio State University.
Even though his home is full of important people eager for his attention, Gordon Gee focuses on Jake and Bianca as if they were the only ones in the room -- even abandoning the other guests to take the couple upstairs to show them his collection of Calders and Miros.
My son had just finished Orange Man, a portrait of his art teacher. After the painting took the top award at the Ohio Governor's Youth Art Exhibition, he gave it to the subject, Jeff Shaw.
Jake, an award-winning artist, was the honored guest of one of the most renowned university presidents in the nation.
What happened?
My husband remembers Jake, after returning from a trip to Haiti the same year, telling us about meeting some Haitian children who had caught a bird. They had tied a string around its leg and were trying to sell it to passers-by along the side of a road. Jake bought it so he could set the poor thing free.
He was blessed with compassion, a gentle spirit and a keenly sensitive conscience.
What happened?
Rewind 10 more years.
Jake is about 8 and, on a spring afternoon, out of school early. We are walking along N. High Street in Columbus, returning to my campus office.
Outside a storefront, a disheveled man sits asking for change. Jake is dumbfounded -- even outraged -- about why the man is there: Why doesn't he have a home? Doesn't anyone care about him? How did this happen?
I answer his questions as best I can, telling him he shouldn't worry, that the problem isn't his but the man's. Jake isn't satisfied.
With tears in his eyes, he replies, "But, Mom, it's like someone took a precious ruby and just threw it out in the gutter."
I'm amazed at the force of his compassion -- and humbled by my lack of the same.
I later relay the exchange to my sister-in-law, Jackie, who tells me that she feels similar sadness upon seeing a homeless person because each was once somebody's baby. The situation, she says, always makes her wonder: What happened?
Fast-forward 20 years.
More recently, and especially in the past three years, Jake's life was marred by anger, confusion and frustration as he found himself engaged in a sort of death struggle for his heart and mind.
After graduating from OSU in 2004, he seemingly became possessed by a sense of entitlement -- as if he shouldn't have to do anything he didn't particularly feel like doing. He often expressed a belief that life should be easy. And he began to embrace a conviction that a person's moral code is entirely subjective, making just about any conduct permissible.
He abused drugs and alcohol. Jack Kerouac was his new hero. His whole worldview seemed distorted, and I lacked the sophistication to help adjust it.
My husband and I tried everything we could think of to help him: We tried patience. We tried psychotherapy. We tried to encourage medication. We tried tough love and soft love. We tried recovery programs. We tried job counseling. We tried kicking him out of our home. We tried taking him back.
We felt as if we were throwing him every possible lifeline, yet he simply refused to grab hold. Because of his suggestion that the problem was geographical -- and because of his disruptive behavior at home -- we put him on a bus to Santa Barbara in March.
That is what happened. That is how Jake became part of the "homeless problem."
The "problem," though, is made up of individuals, each with a unique and special story -- individuals who, for different reasons, are unwilling or unable to fit in with the rest of society.
What to do? I don't know how to solve the homeless problem. I couldn't even solve one person's problem.
But I believe in throwing lifelines -- even something small that simply conveys the message "Hey, you're still a person, worthy of saving."
If we extend small kindnesses, perhaps they can bring a person a little closer to grabbing the bigger offer of a life transformation.
Kind people in Santa Barbara continued to reach out to help Jake. My husband and I continued to throw him long-distance lifelines.
He wouldn't grab on, though.
And then there was the train accident.
Our hearts are broken over the loss of our precious Jake, whose life ended as a homeless guy in Santa Barbara. But, in a way, he is now home more than any of us -- because, when someone threw him the Big Lifeline, he grabbed that one.
In a sense, we're all homeless people on our way home.
So let's be kind to those who journey along with us. Please keep throwing lifelines.
A version of this essay by Suzanne Cupp Beachy, 50, of Columbus ran early last month in the Santa Barbara Independent.
