Rust and Regret: The $700 Life
Melissa Collins just turned fifty-five last spring, though the deep lines around her eyes suggest a woman a decade older.
She sits on two plastic crates covered by a dirty worn out custion, wearing three layers of sweat shirts to ward off the damp chill that the RV.s thin walls can’t keep out. She isn’t traveling, she isn’t retired in the way the commercials adverrtised. She is simply waiting.
She is simply waiting.
Waiting for what? She doesn’t know yet.
The air outside Melissa’s kitchen window smells permanently of wet cardboard and burning plastic. It’s the signature scent of the encampment, a patch of forgotten industrial land where the city’s broken vehicles come to die.
Melissa lives in one of those—1980’s Winnebago LE RV with streaks of rust running down the side. It’s beige siding with rust spots brushed all around the sides. It’s a sad situation for Melissa. The tires have long since flattened into the mud, anchoring her to this spot.
Her life is measured in the mathematics of survival. Every month, a social security survivor’s pension check of $700 arrives from a husband who passed away years ago. He is a ghost in this story. The invisible hand keeping her alive, but not living. That $700 is a cruical magic number.
$700 a month to live on is a fortune for Melissa
It’s just enough to buy propane for her Mr. Buddy heater, some cheap canned food like mini ravioli, ramon noodles, and cheap dollar store off-brand coffee. And keep her cell phone going—her only tether to the outside world.
It is enough to exist in the trashy lot, but never enough to escape it. One mechanical failure, one leak in the roof, and the math stops working entirely.
But it wasn’t the poverty that broke Melissa; it was the lonileness. On the dashboard, gathering dust, sits a framed photograph of a young man with a wide grin that would melt any Mother’s heart. This is her only son Tommy Lee. He was thirty-three, her pride, her retirement plan, and her heart. Two years ago, a motorcycle accident on a wet highway one early July Sunday morning claimed his life instantly.
When he died, Melissa’s will to participate in the world died with him. She looked at her future—decades of struggle without her emotional anchor—and simply stopped running.
Now she spends her days staring out at the mounds of garbage, neighbors pile up, watching feral dogs pick through the refuse. She feels disappointed, not just in her circumstances, but in the promise of life itself.
As night falls over the encampment, Melissa turns off her battery-powered lantern to save power. As she lies in the dark, wondering what her future looks like, she feels she has already lived past her expiration date.
Melissa takes life one day at a time. But I guess we all do. No one is promised tomorrow. Right? Life is a gift. Some die young and some suffer through to old age.
But for Melissa, she’s not living life; she’s just existing off her $700 monthly check living in regret and disappointment.
I know life is hard for Melissa. It’s really hard for all of us, but more so for peole like Melissa who are experiencing homelessness. She just needs a caring friend to point the way for her to a new direction and hopefully long-lasting peace.
May God bless Melissa. I wish the best for her.
Kindly,
Carol