When I began volunteering at the Cambridge Food Pantry, I asked some volunteers and staff if they might find one or more of their guests to talk to me about being hungry enough to seek food help at a food pantry.
These guests, including Lloyd, have become my teachers. Each conversation has been a lesson in resilience, hope, and the human spirit. Lloyd, in particular, has shared invaluable insights that have left a lasting impression on me.
Lloyd is a man who, despite his situation, is filled with hope and kindness. We are friends.
He agreed to talk with me and allow photographs, saying he had nothing to hide. He hoped I could help him get a basket for his bike to carry enough food from the pantry to last a few days.
I agreed.
I was told he might welcome some other help; he was having a rough time. I met with him, and we hit it off.
He never quite recovered, he told me, from the death of a child and could no longer work because of severe emotional problems.
He lived alone in a small apartment and got some government support.
I met him near the school library and liked him right away. I showed him a photo of a bike basket on Amazon, and he said he would appreciate it. His eyes and face were sad.
He seemed lost and alone, and I asked him if he was okay. He began crying. His companion and friend, cat Frankie, had died a few days before, and he was grieving painfully. He said he loved Frankie more than anything in his life.
Lloyd said he welcomed the basket, but his real hope in meeting me was to get enough dry and wet cat food to feed the many feral cats he fed in the neighborhood.
One of the neighbors had called the police about it, but he said helping, saving, and feeding cats was the most essential thing in his life, the thing he most cared about and lived for. They were, he said, his heart.
I liked Lloyd immediately. He was a friendly and gentle man whose emotional life now centered around the cats he tried to feed and quickly ran out of money for. He was kind and thoughtful. We talked on a cell phone once a week, sometimes twice.
It would be worthwhile to work with him and help him when I could. He had few winter clothes or caps, and he needed food support from the pantry and the cats. I didn’t and wonder if he got the money for that.
But I wanted to be something other than primarily a cat food provider. We had different ideas. He said he didn’t need anything else; the cats were everything to him. I could tell immediately that he wanted a cat food supporter, not more.
I felt I had a problem right away.
Lloyd had fought with every cat rescue group in the area and refused to work with any of them. I told him I couldn’t promise to feed these cats for the foreseeable future. I thought he needed the help of a rescue group, and I would be glad to help him with that.
I suggested the group that gave us Zip; they work with outdoor and feral cats.
He said he would never work with them and wouldn’t say why. He then got angry with me and said he wanted help with the cats and nothing else. He said I could call him whenever I wanted and that he liked talking with me. But he only wanted cat food or nothing. Without that, he made it clear there wouldn’t be a relationship.
And there wasn’t.
There was no easy way around this. I bought him a big bag of dry cat food and some moist food in a box of cans, once only—a kind of goodbye gift. I’ve done this work long enough to know the importance of boundaries.
I told him I couldn’t work with him if I made him angry or couldn’t help him. I told him to call if he thought I could help him in any other way. It was 50-50, he might call or maybe not.
Lloyd was adamant that he couldn’t put himself or his needs in front of the cats; they were the ones who needed help, and that was the help he needed and wanted the only help.
That was about two months ago. Lloyd didn’t have a working phone. He used a distant relative’s loaned phone once in a while or his son’s used phone. His son was a few hundred miles away, and they rarely spoke to one another.
I felt we needed to be done, but maybe I was wrong.
I had connected with Lloyd and felt I could help him in several ways. I care about him. I’m not a shrink or social worker, but I know about boundaries and would be good at connecting Lloyd with professionals who can help him. I never play God; I have no magic wands.
In my Army of Good Work, I have wondered what it means to be good. I’ve said more than once that I often feel selfish when I do good because it feels so good. Am I doing it for me or others?
Lloyd managed to call me the other day. He seemed embarrassed about his temper tantrum and devastated about his hungry cats.
He wondered if I couldn’t help him with cat food again. He asked me how I was, and he seemed sincere about liking to talk with me. It is straightforward to speak to Lloyd if the conversation is about something other than cats.
He didn’t ask me for anything else, and the only help he accepted earlier was a winter cap and jacket.
He seemed crushed to be unable to help his cats, and he was unwilling to call any group or organization for help. He was in pain.
He has no car and rides all over town on his bike, with a basket full on the back.
I thought about what it means to be “good” to people. Was it about me, or was it about them?
Do people have to see the world the way I do for me to want to help them? I have good friends who have radically different ideas about things than me. We don’t judge or reject one another because we see the world differently.
Feeding his cats permanently was out of the question, financially or wisely.
Did I have the right to judge Lloyd because he didn’t want the help I thought he needed, but the help he seemed to need—caring for those cats? His whole emotional life seemed to revolve around that.
He had been in therapy, he said, for years after his daughter died.
He is a sweet, polite, and caring man. He is a troubled man worth helping, even for a week. It’s worth one more try.
I do know a thing…I can’t be enabled to pay for an obsession. I told him that. I also decided to try to help him and win his trust so I might one day get him to help. I can afford some cat food this time.
I could make him happy – he sounded so sad because the cats were hungry and he couldn’t feed them.” Wet food is too expensive,” he said, “I wouldn’t ask you for that. But my cats need some food, and if you could get me a bag of inexpensive dry food, I would appreciate that. It’s for the cats, not me.”
I said I would think about it. It was in my hands now.
Maria knew what I would do all along.
I went to the Dollar Store with her and bought $56 worth of wet and dry food (a huge bag). I knew Lloyd was embarrassed to see me after he shouted at me, and asking for help was tough.
I called him, and he answered on his cell phone. I said I was on my way to drop off the cat food this one time. I told myself it was okay to say no, but it was also okay to say yes.
He thanked me several times. I knew I wouldn’t hear from him for a while.
I am genuinely connected to Lloyd and have not stopped wanting to help him. I want to do good, especially for people with nowhere to go.
Doing good is always complicated, and there is always more than one way. I haven’t given up on Lloyd yet, and the next time he calls, I will be ready if there is a next time.
I’ll tie any help to professional help for him.
Authentic help and love come when you care more about others than yourself.
It is a highly complex thing to do.
