Tedford Housing will remember, along with our friends in the community, people who experienced homelessness and who passed away in the past year.

The event will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 21, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brunswick.

We join hundreds of other communities in Maine and across the country that collectively represent the National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. It is poignant that the service is held on the longest day, the Winter Solstice. We recognize that homelessness in all forms is an injustice. On the longest night of the year we are compelled, in our vigil, to remember those who are outside, unsheltered.

Four years ago, in 2019, a Brunswick man, Russell Williams, was found in his sleeping bag, dead, along the railroad tracks after being outside on a bitterly cold late November night. To this day, his death serves as a touchstone and call to action. An awareness that, even within our welcoming and caring community, many of our fellow citizens don’t have a warm place to stay on a cold winter’s night.

More recently, several deaths in encampments in Portland and Sanford have again shed a bright light on a reality that for many was, not too long ago, unthinkable. In the past two years, we are aware of more people in Brunswick and the surrounding area sleeping in encampments, in their cars, and other places not fit for human habitation. Numbers of unsheltered persons in the State have gone up in the past two years, according to the annual point-in-time survey.

As we stand in silence, light flickering from our candles, perhaps we stand not only to remember but to re-visit some fundamental questions. Is it okay for any of our fellow citizens, our neighbors, to die because they lacked a place to get out of the cold? How many of us are one paycheck or catastrophe away from suddenly being without any options? What are meaningful ways that we can make a difference in the life of just one person who may be facing an unsure future on the streets?

The vigil serves for some as a reaffirmation that homelessness can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated, in our community through a shared commitment of will and resources. To some that may sound farfetched or unachievable. But we know, and see, the people in the community who struggled, may have lost their housing — and perhaps their hope — only to get the just right amount of assistance at the right time, and they have resumed their journey. Sometimes that assistance begins when the door opens and allows someone to come in from the cold. Sometimes that has to happen a couple of times. At Tedford, sometimes I say that we are in the business of second chances.

We are grateful to be in a community where the collective spirit is a hand up, and the will of many is to volunteer, organize, advocate, and give generously to make sure that all families and individuals, including those displaced and without the anchor a home provides, can grow and thrive. We are grateful to have the support, and to work in cooperation, with our fellow community-serving organizations, The Gathering Place, Midcoast Hunger Prevention Program, and Oasis Free Clinic to name a few. We know that without the services and resources they provide, there would be huge gaps in our community safety net and many more people facing the life-threatening circumstances of hunger and lack of medical care.

So please join us on Thursday to remember and hold space for those who have passed, and, perhaps to reflect and re-engage for the good work ahead.

Giff Jamison is program director for Tedford Housing. 

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