Loss
Every day I meet people from every walk of life: nurses, students, teaching assistants, factory workers, people relying on benefits, chefs, people with degrees and people without. People full of joy, people facing severe depression, people brought up in care, people from stable homes, people fighting addictions and people who aren’t. People of different faiths, sexualities, genders, and from all corners of the world.
In seven years of running the foodbank, I’ve met thousands of people. A wonderful mix of brilliant, complicated, fascinating human beings. Every single one carrying a story that mattered.
Last week I hit a milestone I never thought about hitting. Honestly, I never wanted to hit this one. We lost our 25th person who had visited the foodbank and become someone special in my life.
Shaun, Smokey, Stephen, Steven, Stephen, Jane, Bill, Shane, Emma, Jon, Thomas, Charlie, Chris, Chrissy, Michael, James, Biggy, Amy, Tom, Sharon, Carl, Sarah, Sara, Pete and Carl.
Twenty‑five people in seven years.
I can picture each one of them. I remember the little things; the way they laughed, the frustrations they carried, the pain they tried to hide, the dreams they still dared to talk about. I remember their voices. Their jokes. Their hopes.
Some of these people led lives I’m thankful I don’t have to live. Lives full of running from trauma, from people, from themselves. Lives spent chasing the next hit, trying to fill a void that never stayed full for long. Lives shaped by decisions I didn’t agree with, but decisions that made sense in the chaos they lived in.
And there’s a part of me, a quiet part, that feels relief for them now.
They don’t have to run anymore.
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They don’t have to fight every single day.
They don’t have to face the battle that exhausted them.
I hate drugs. I hate what they do to people. I hate how they steal and destroy lives, how they create carnage and leave nothing but wreckage behind. I say that as someone who had a few years trying all sorts of things myself. I know the highs. I know the escape. I know the feeling of stepping out of reality for a bit.
Thankfully, I met a wonderful woman who changed my life. Sure, I’ve had the odd temptation over the years, but I’ve got a far better option now, a life worth staying present for.
Addiction is a monster, and I’ve seen it take far too many people I cared about.
Some of these losses have wrecked me. I’ve cried. I’ve felt a pain that sits heavy in the chest. A few of them came week after week, and somewhere along the line I almost became numb to it.
I don’t want to become numb.
Every one of these people deserved someone who would miss them. Someone who would mourn them. I’m not saying I was the only person who cared. Far from it. The community felt the loss each time. There was shock, sadness, gossip, whispers around town. But I felt it too. I still do.
This is the reality of the job. I don’t face half as much as many other professions, but that doesn’t make the loss feel any less real. It affects me. It shapes me. It reminds me that showing up for people isn’t just about food parcels or conversations. It’s about carrying their stories, even when their stories end too soon.
I can’t save everyone. I can’t fix every battle. But I can remember them. I can honour them. And I can keep showing up, because showing up is the only thing that ever changed anything.
