David
“Michigan had double-digit unemployment when I graduated high school in 1980, so I went to work for a grocery store as a cashier. But after a year, they were only giving 30 to 34 hours a week because they didn’t want to designate me as full-time. Me and my girlfriend ended up having a baby, we got married, and I wasn’t able to support our new family on my paycheck. But I knew that if I joined the military, I was going to get benefits, a place to live and food to eat, and enough money to support my family, and that's what got me into the Army.
Initially, I wanted to join the Air Force, but the Army pulled me at the last minute and they talked me into it. My scores were so high, I was offered nearly any enlisted position that I wanted. I was interested in the medical field, so I got into orthopedics and became an orthopedic technician.
I got out in 1985. We had two daughters at that point, and our marriage didn't work out, so I decided to not re-enlist so I could see my children. When I came back to Michigan, I started working at a Comfort Inn. I bounced around from jobs that weren’t paying me like when I was in the service. I ended up learning a trade through a painting company, but by then my life had begun to unravel completely. I began drinking quite heavily: when I left the army, I was probably drinking a pint per day, and my habit had grown to a half a gallon per day.
This went on for about three years before I lost all my faculties. On November 3rd of 2022, my heart stopped, twice. At the time I had my own apartment, and on the first of the month, me and my best friend, who was also a veteran, would put our checks together to buy a small amount of cocaine, and for the rest of the month, we would drink cheap liquor and roll our own cigarettes.
But on November 3rd, what I thought was cocaine was not cocaine: it was fentanyl, and it stopped my heart. The paramedics got my heart started at the apartment, but it stopped again in the parking lot of the hospital. I was in the hospital for four days, intubated and with tubes and wires coming and going everywhere.
I realized that this could easily happen again. I was experiencing depression like I had never had in my life, and to deal with it, I became so involved with alcohol and cocaine that I had no fight left in me. My only concern was how do I get high today? How can I stay drunk?
My best friend wasn’t any better off than me, so I knew he couldn’t help. So I didn't walk; I ran to the VA begging for help. They got me involved in long-term inpatient programming and that was the only thing that saved me. I've got almost nine months of sobriety now at Residential Community Outreach, a homeless shelter, and this is the longest stretch of sobriety I've had since I left the service. It’s one day at a time, and at times, even one hour at a time.
But the hardest part of homelessness are the anniversary dates of my firstborn son and my grandson. They passed away five years ago, five months apart. I know how my grandson passed, but I’m not exactly sure about my son. I’m still not ready to go to the Owosso courthouse and get his death certificate.
My son was an Army Ranger, a war hero, and a top sniper in Iraq. When he came home in ‘03, he already had a drinking problem, but his new drug became heroin. He had PTSD, and had been in and out of institutions. Two weeks before he passed, he picked me and took me to his new house. He had just gotten remarried. As he’s showing me his house, he confessed to me that he was using heroin, and that led to a great big argument that didn’t go so well.
Two weeks later, he passed away. He had been in the hospital for seven days for Crohn’s disease, and when he left, he called his month and said, ‘Mom, I’m going home and I’m gonna cook myself some food I want to eat!’. He was apparently in a pretty good mood, and she told him to call her when he got home.
Three hours later, he still hadn’t called and he wouldn’t pick up the phone, so she drove over there. He wouldn’t answer the door, so the police came and kicked down the door, and that’s when they found him.
After my son left the Army, him and his wife decided they wanted to have another child. But they didn’t know the severity of the chemicals he had been exposed to in the trenches and tunnels of Iraq, and my grandson was born a quadriplegic and needed a tracheotomy. The doctors expected him to only make it one or two years, but he made it 11. But when they told my grandson that his father had passed away, his organs began shutting down. Five months later, he passed at the Ann Arbor Children’s Hospital.
I have mixed emotions about both deaths: for one, I’m sorrowful and for the other, I’m happy. My grandson never got to use his arms or legs. He couldn’t even turn his head. When he passed, it hurt me, but I knew he was going to be with his dad, with good arms and good legs. My son…that’s a hard one for me. This year was the first time I did the anniversary sober. I tried to occupy my time, and remember all of the good memories of my son I have from him growing up as a boy. I look at their pictures on my phone from when they were together, and I know they’re together now.
I am extremely grateful for RCO. The VA pays for a rental for a period of time and then people have to start paying on their own. Veterans get their own room and key. I've got my little TV and radio in there. They don’t have a curfew, give us three meals a day, and wash our clothes.
I think the general assumption about people experiencing homelessness is that they want to be homeless. People look into the streets of San Francisco or Oakland or Los Angeles, see makeshift dwellings and people soliciting, and assume they are there by choice. While there is a certain population homeless because they don't like the rules or whatever, there are far more who desire any type of home. We don’t want to be homeless, we don’t want to stand on a street corner begging for money. We just want a home.
I’ve got a like a third-grade education on what to do right in life, but I got a PhD and what not to do. If I were to speak to the youth today about what I know, it would be very simple: stay in school. Don’t have kids before you’re ready. Stay away from drugs and alcohol, because kids are sampling things off the streets and they're dying, and you don’t get a second chance with that.
It's also important to not only stay at school, but to do the best that you can. Go to college, a community college, or learn a skilled trade, get an apprenticeship, and get to work right now.”
– David Syed
This story is part of a series during Homelessness Awareness Month. Please consider donating to a local shelter during this month of giving.