Liberty demands we allow people to make "bad" choices

Families of street people are collateral damage Daphne Bramham, Vancouver SunPublished: Friday, January 02, 2009

Shannon Barker is long past feeling guilty or ashamed when a street person like Tracey dies in a fire, huddled under a tarp and shopping cart in downtown Vancouver.

It's politically incorrect and anathema on the cocktail circuit. But Barker believes deaths like Tracey's are "just tragedies, inescapable, unpreventible tragedies."

"We can't save everyone," she told me in an e-mail. "We tried to save our brother, as did the Salvation Army, the First United Church, the Maple Ridge Treatment Centre, the Downtown Eastside Residents Association and every other organization run by generous souls down on East Hastings, all to no avail.

"Here's the deal, he didn't want to be saved. Where do we find the arrogance to suggest we know what is the best way for someone else to live, or how someone else chooses to die? Who do we think we are? Is our lifestyle the only real one? The only valuable one? The only absolutely right one?

"When we asked my brother why he was so determined to stay living on the streets, leave his condo, well-paying job and son, why he wouldn't let us 'drag' him out of the gutter, he said: 'I love it here, it is the first place I have really belonged, these are my friends. I don't have to worry about a mortgage payment, or pay a utility bill, or even shop for clothes. They are all supplied to me by the various agencies. Why would I ever leave?'"

It had never occurred to Barker that for her brother and others street life is a deliberate choice made regardless of the collateral damage it inflicts on family and friends.

Barker says that in addition to a loving and supportive family, her brother had countless opportunities for government-supported detox, rehab and mental health support offered by dozens of different non-profit agencies. Repeatedly he chose none of the above "racing by every exit ramp with incredible speed and determination."

Just a few days before Christmas, her brother signed a do-not-resuscitate order in the critical care unit of Burnaby General Hospital, surrounded by doctors, caring and supportive nurses and his family, all working to ensure he dies with no pain.

"I don't feel society has let him or any of these people down, there are just limits as to what we can do. So, this Christmas, I am once again desperately trying to support my 84-year-old mother who is dying on the inside, while my brother is dying on the outside, hoping like hell that she won't follow him to the grave.

"I suggest that no matter what you do, what you write, what the government does or spends, what programs the church or anyone else sets up, some of these people will die, and in a way we are uncomfortable with. Their deaths will be a tragedy for them, their loved ones and society as a whole. My brother is one we could not save."

Barker wrote in response to a column in which I wrote that in a wealthy city, province and country like ours, we should be ashamed that people are left to die on the street.

"Where is our support, our story?" she asked on behalf of her family and others.

It's here and it ends as her eloquent and moving e-mail did with Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer as a caution to all who want to end homelessness.

"God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

dbramham@vancouversun.com