BATH

O n the cusp of the longest night of the year, Tedford Housing employees and volunteers gathered Thursday at an annual memorial day service for homeless individuals who passed away during the last year. The service is also to remember Sarah, who was in Tedford’s supportive housing program when she passed away at the age of 53 last April.

“She was a very free spirit with beautiful auburn hair,” said Sarah’s supportive housing case manager, Carol Gross. “And she was always smiling.”

Sarah lived at Gilbert Place in Bath, one of Tedford’s apartment units that houses five previously homeless adults. Originally from Cape Cod, she lived in the Bath area for more than 15 years.

Gross grew teary as she talked about Sarah. In addition to working together for seven years, she said they had close ties as Sarah had been dating Gross’s cousin since before she became a client.

“Sometimes I work with people I’ve known for 30 years and then suddenly they are a client; it’s a different kind of relationship,” said Gross. “Sarah would come over to hug me and I’d remind her there were boundaries, but Sarah would never give up.”

Sarah also became fast friends with Robin, her downstairs neighbor at Tedford’s Gilbert Place.

“They were almost like sisters,” Gross said. “They took really good care of each other.”

Robin said she and Sarah spent every day together.

“Sarah was always visiting people and giving them things,” she said. “She was a very thoughtful and very well-kept woman. She would never leave the house without her makeup on.

“We spent hours together sitting outside behind the house and drinking coffee,” Robin said, though, at the time, the backyard at Gilbert Place didn’t even have grass.

Last winter, Sarah and Robin cooked up an idea: They decided to plant a garden in their backyard.

Robin said that Sarah, who had little prior experience gardening, would say, “wouldn’t it be nice to have a flower garden to look at” while they drank their coffee and chatted in the summer.

The friends were planning on getting to work as soon as the snow cleared away. When Sarah passed away April 3, Robin lost her best friend and co-gardener, and the fate of the garden was called into question.

“Carol encouraged me to to go ahead with our plans for the garden,” Robin said. “She said it would be the best way to heal and get through my grief.”

Starting with little seedlings, the garden, which Robin named for Sarah, soon took root.

“Everything blossomed, and I know it’s because Sarah is looking down,” she said. Wildflowers, raspberries, and blackberries grew quickly in Sarah’s Garden.

When the cold came, though, the garden stopped blooming.

“I cried when I had to lay the garden to rest,” Robin said, “because it had helped me to maintain this connection to Sarah.”

“I encourage everybody that is grieving to create a garden if they can. You get to see something grow and life is given back,” Robin said. “It is so healing.”

Gross, Sarah’s case manager, described Sarah as “highly intelligent” and an avid reader.

“There’s a common misconception that homeless people are uneducated or drug addicts,” she said. “Sarah had her problems, as we all have, but she was smart and health conscious.”

Sarah died unexpectedly of health complications. Her family lives in Massachusetts.

“She loved her sister to pieces,” Gross said. Sarah’s family drove to collect her belongings and arranged to have her remains interred near the family home.

Executive Director of Tedford Housing Craig Phillips said Tedford Housing has been observing National Homeless Persons Memorial Day for the past five years. The memorial usually has around 30 attendants, and is open to members of the community.

Started in 1990 by the National Coalition for the Homeless, the National Consumer Advisory Board and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, the memorial is held annually on or near the winter solstice.

“The memorial aligns with the darkest day of the year as a reminder to communities of the people who are at their darkest moments,” Phillips said. “And to remember that each day after this gets a little brighter.”

Phillips said several homelessness prevention groups across the state now hold memorial services for homeless people in their communities who have passed away, including in Portland, Lewiston and Bangor.

Though homelessness declined 4 percent nationwide in 2013, homelessness has increased in Maine 26 percent, the second largest percentage increase in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homelessness Assessment Report.

In Maine, 3,016 people are currently homeless, an increase of 623 people from last year. Approximately 610,042 are homeless nationwide.

Maine has the second lowest rate of unsheltered homelessness in the nation, at 2.1 percent. This aligns with the national 1 percent increase over the past year in people counted in emergency shelters and transitional housing programs.

rgargiulo@timesrecord.com