Gareth O'Callaghan: You don't have to be living rough to feel the pain of homelessness

His name is Jason.

He looks bagged out and bears the distinctive smell of a life spent on the streets. Days mean nothing on the timeline of homelessness.

His bobble hat belonged to his mother. Her scent, which he once loved, has been gone for a long time. He has a barking dry cough and his breath stinks of stale alcohol and halitosis.

His badly bruised nose distorts his face. He walks with a limp — injuries caused by a beating he took in a city centre laneway where he had been sleeping two nights before.

Two men urinated on him, then kicked him senseless. He didn’t go to A&E, because the gardaí would be called and he didn’t want to embarrass his father again.

He was sorry he had cut the finger sleeves off his gloves. He did it because it was easier to count the coins from decent passers-by in his coffee cup. His fingertips are bluish and red — chilblains, his mother used to call them.

She died when he was 23, five years ago. It was as though a fuse tripped somewhere in his brain that day, and he finally disconnected himself from a life he always felt he never belonged to.

Never went home

Shortly after her funeral, he took to the streets and never came home, disappearing into the shadows with other strangers who lived out there somewhere in the darkness beneath the night sky. 

This morning Jason’s coffee cup is empty. Such is his hunger, he can feel a bile rising in his throat, as though he might throw up. Cheap cider and whiskey don’t mix well.

Just as he’s about to lie down he spots his father.

Jim enjoys a morning coffee and his newspaper in a side-street coffee shop in the city twice a week. His son has come to know his father’s routine and will arrive unexpectedly. He doesn’t want to annoy him, or anyone for that matter.

He just needs to feel warmth back in his hands, if only for an hour, and the breakfast he’s guaranteed. And money. You won’t survive the streets without money.

Jim doesn’t know his son’s routine, so he sits in silent hope that this might be the morning. He misses him on so many levels.

“He’s still only a young lad, even after all the years,” he tells his two best friends. He wishes his son knew how lonely he is, how his life stopped the day he left. The staff here don’t mind Jason dropping in when it’s quiet. They know the story.

This morning they sit together and chat, mostly about the weather. Snow is falling outside.

Jason is starting to look his father’s age, Jim thinks to himself, such is what street life does to a body.

There are questions he wants to ask, but he’s afraid to. He knows every time they meet could be the last. When he saw his son’s badly beaten face that morning, he broke down crying.

Then Jason started to cry, as did the young woman who served their coffee and toasted sandwiches. 

Jim pleaded with him to go to the hospital, he even offered to drive him. Jason, Jim’s only child, shakes his head. The young girl brings extra toast and coffee refills.

The tears ease and they chat some more, and then Jim slides a small envelope across the table. It’s what he does when they meet because Jim knows it will get his boy into a hostel for a few nights, away from the streets; unless he decides to drink it.

“Whiskey keeps me warm,” he tells his father, and a little bit of weed takes away anxiety; but then he’s barred from the hostel where they’re breathalysed as they arrive for the night, for safety’s sake.

He takes his gloves off and puts the cash into the back of a small brown leather wallet, which contains a dog-eared photo of his mother whose smiling face melts him every time he studies it. He kisses the wallet and pockets it.

Two young gardaí stand at the counter chatting, surveying the room, as they wait for takeaways. They nod to Jim. He was once their boss, himself a proud garda of 34 years before he became his wife’s carer until the cancer took her.

Jim can’t help thinking that the two officers are the same age as his son, who now sadly looks years older than them.

Nature no friend

The elements of nature on the open streets are no friend to a broken soul, nor are the muggers who take advantage of his plight.

Jim asks his boy to come home for Christmas; just for a couple of days. It would mean so much to him. Jason shakes his head without looking up. Same every year, like touching a nerve.

Jim watches as he devours the food as though someone might take it back. He tries to empty his head of the thought that it could be his last.

Jason changes the subject. He talks about friends he has made. He meets them in Peace Park, beside Grand Parade. He sometimes goes to the cinema.

“What was the last film you saw?” Jim asks.

Jason doesn’t answer. He has a new girlfriend.

“Really? That’s great news,” Jim replies. “What’s her name?”

No answer, again. There is no girlfriend. There is no cinema.

Jason stands and pulls up the hood of his jacket. Jim pleads with him to stay.

“Please?” Jason says nothing. “You’re in no hurry. Why are you leaving so soon?”

It’s the worst part of meeting — the parting. It’s not fair, and no one wants to know.

It’s those bloody Christmas songs playing on the speaker above their table, Jim thinks. It’s the same every year: ‘Please Come Home For Christmas’, ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’, ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year’.

But it’s not the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the time Jim dreads most.

His wife is dead, his son is homeless, and he lives alone in an empty house that was once a family home.

Jim watches his son as he shuffles through the café, his head bowed as he brushes against the brightly lit tree beside the counter.

He opens the door to the sound of wind chimes and disappears out onto the cold streets — those same streets Jim can’t get out of his head, especially at night when he’s lying in bed while his son lies huddled in a doorway somewhere in a wet sleeping bag.

There are nights when Jim sleeps in his son’s bedroom because it helps him feel closer to the two most important people in his life, now both ghosts of his past.

On those nights, he falls asleep when the tears exhaust him.

He reminds himself that you don’t have to be living rough on the streets to feel homeless.

Jim pays the bill and thanks the girl who served them. He leaves a tip for her. She looks so sad.

As he pulls the door behind him, he notices Jason sitting against a wall across the street, begging.

His heart can’t sink any lower. As he heads back to his car, the snow turns into rain.