Lay Down

My sense of directions abandons me when I look for Samuel’s home number. After a few turns in his street, I surrender.   I park my Honda and find my way on a sunny and windy early afternoon. As soon as Samuel unlocks the door to his one-bedroom apartment, he asks me where I parked. He then invites me to park exactly in front of his building as he already told me over the phone. Without a word, I turn on my heels, walk back to my car, and park it right beneath his living room. As soon as I turn off the ignition key, he gives me the thumbs up from the rectangular windowpane.

Back in the living room, I make myself comfortable on the couch, the back of my head against the window facing the street, my green car, and a young tree. Samuel sits on a wheelchair right in front of my eyes. He switches off the TV on the side. He is an 88-yearold veteran with a deep and infectious laugh and an unrelentless faith in God. Formerly married, he has been living alone for 40 years. In his hands, almost anything becomes either a sign of God’s will at work or a source of banter. For example the supreme cleanliness and tidiness of his apartment is a sure sign that he does not need to marry anymore since his outstanding home care worker takes care of him much better than any wife.


I ask him why he needs a wheelchair. The story of his falls and a major surgery reveals that when he fell, his next-door neighbor rung one of his daughters because she noticed that at night the light in the living room was on but nobody picked up the phone. His neighbor has always an eye on him. In his words:

“How you doing?” She calls me. And then, in the night, “Close your windows; close your shades.” She’d tell me that all the time.

Curious, I ask why he needs to close the shades. He replies:

Guys drive-by and shoot. I see guys, some of these guys, up here drinking, and using that dope. And they don’t care; they’re shooting at one another. They don’t have to be shooting at you. […] They don’t care who they’re shooting, they just be shooting. And some of them don’t know how to shoot.

Formerly married, he has been living alone for 40 years. In his hands, almost anything becomes either a sign of God’s will at work or a source of banter. For example the supreme cleanliness and tidiness of his apartment is a sure sign that he does not need to marry anymore since his outstanding home care worker takes care of him much better than any wife. I ask him why he needs a wheelchair. The story of his falls and a major surgery reveals that when he fell, his next-door neighbor rung one of his daughters because she noticed that at night the light in the living room was on but nobody picked up the phone. His neighbor has always an eye on him. In his words:

“How you doing?” She calls me. And then, in the night, “Close your windows; close your shades.” She’d tell me that all the time.

Curious, I ask why he needs to close the shades. He replies:

Guys drive-by and shoot. I see guys, some of these guys, up here drinking, and using that dope. And they don’t care; they’re shooting at one another. They don’t have to be shooting at you. […] They don’t care who they’re shooting, they just be shooting. And some of them don’t know how to shoot.

My ears suddenly become more alert to the sounds of the street. Samuel continues:

So I always hit the floor when they start shooting. That’s the best thing you can do, when they start shooting. Lay down. You can get hit anyway, but this is safer. Fall on the floor. You have all the bullets have to go through a lot of stuff before they get to you. If you open the window, the bullets will go through that easy.

Samuel tells me how much he usually enjoys looking at the tree outside, but his neighbor would then tell him “Stay out the window.” Maybe he learned from his guardian-neighbor to insist on the right spot where I should leave my car when he remarks:

“Just like I told you when you came in here, I said I be the one to guide you.”

[One of  six stories on living alone in San Francisco published in Elena Portacolone’s monthly column in the newsletter of Planning for Elders -September 2010 – February 2011 The project is part of the UCSF Community Partnership Initiative]