Chilling

The death notice was sparse, telling little of the life that had ended. "Charles showed up at the doors of Swedish Hospital with wet clothes and socks (no shoes). He died of hypothermia November 19, 2018." Receiving this on Christmas morning 2025, seven years after the fact, rattled me. It was a fate I had feared for a decade but only now was confirmed.

My bright and charming friend who majored in biology a year behind me, was not yet 70 at his death and had been unhoused for years, living in a tent under a freeway bridge. What had happened to lead him to veer off a promising future into a world of drugs and homelessness? I will always wonder.

Charles had grown up on both sides of the Atlantic, where his parents held high level positions, later returning to the Midwest and professorial jobs. A tall and handsome football player, he had twinkling eyes and a quick and playful wit. He wanted to be a doctor and finished college with a GPA that should have made him a shoe-in, particularly as many schools at that time were clamoring for qualified African American applicants. But something went wrong.

My husband, Des, and I had lost touch when he failed to show up as a groomsman in our wedding. That was 1972. Decades passed without contact. Des and I wondered about him on and off, puzzled by his disappearance. One time I thought I might have exchanged glances with him in a busy Florida airport while I was traveling for work, only to lose eye contact in the crowd. I never knew if it was really him, if he saw me, or if it was just someone else who looked like I imagined he would look some ten years post college.

Then several decades later, Des discovered Charles on Facebook not long before a planned trip to Seattle. Des suggested getting together for lunch. Charles accepted but failed to appear. Months later Des tried again when another occasion took him back to the city. This time Charles arrived, in jeans and a plaid shirt, easily recognizable but noticeably gaunt. He explained he had been embarrassed to show up the first time.

Finally relaxing a little over hamburgers and memories of old friends and college days, Charles revealed his story. After college he decided, without trying, that his grades were not sufficient for a successful run at medical school, so he took a white-collar job in the tech industry. He married, but the marriage faltered. When they split, he was distraught, drank heavily, and lost his job. Trouble with drugs followed, and he served time in prison for selling cocaine to Chicago executives. Once out, he was unable to find work and landed in a homeless shelter, working as a cook. He left the shelter after being attacked with a machete by another resident. By the time he and Des connected, Charles had lived in a tent for more than a decade.

Over the next several months, we coordinated with mutual friends living in the area who helped him acquire a new tent and warmer clothes. We sent him some money. He asked for nothing but expressed genuine gratitude. A few months later he texted that he had just swallowed a bottle of Tylenol intending to end his life, referring to himself in the third person. We reached out to the suicide hotline for guidance and managed to contact Charles via text messages and learn his location. He refused a ride with police, but they shadowed him as we coaxed him by text to continue walking to the emergency room. He contacted us a day or two later to say he was okay and going back to where he lived. That was 2015. Communication stopped not long after. There were no more texts or social media posts. We kept wondering what had happened to him, much as we had years before when he stood us up on our wedding day. The wedding misstep puzzled us, but we assumed a logical explanation would follow (it hadn't). This time, awareness of his fragility filled us with dread.

Reflecting back on college, I remain both bemused and horrified as I think about one particular adventure we shared—a night where we both could have died of hypothermia. Charles and I had taken a biology exam before hitting the road to meet up with Des and other friends who were already starting a skiing weekend about two hours from the Twin Cities. It was dark and snowing heavily as we ventured out in Charles' red "heavy Chevy" as we called it. It was a rattletrap of a convertible, with a folding roof that didn't close entirely, leaving space for wind to whistle through on the passenger side. The headlights created a tunnel of white blowing snow with the road barely visible. Charles was a careful and experienced winter driver and trustworthy companion who drove cautiously. I was mostly just cold and too naïve at the time to recognize the full danger we could be facing. I now cringe thinking about how the snowy rural roads and frigid temperatures could have resulted in a dire outcome had we slid into the ditch on that frigid Minnesota night.

Once safely at the ski area, we all enjoyed a delightful weekend on the slopes. It was Charles' first time skiing despite having spent part of his childhood in Switzerland. As we teased, he snowplowed down every slope with abandon and a toothy grin, his face mostly obscured behind big sunglasses, his afro ruffling in the wind. After skiing, we all put on our swimsuits and warmed up in the sauna as Charles shared his usually risque jokes and repartee.

In remembering him and these good times now that I know he is gone, I can't reconcile the trajectory his life took. He was a good student who had mixed easily with his mostly white friends, though he seemed less at ease with the more militant black students who didn't share his privileged upbringing. He once revealed feeling uneasy with this incongruity. Somehow, he avoided being drafted and sent to Vietnam.

How did his life's twists and turns result in such a downward and devastating spiral? Was he so crippled by insecurity about his ability to succeed in gaining admission to medical school that he stopped trying? Was he thwarted by racism challenging his obvious capabilities? Did he have longstanding mental health or drug problems that only surfaced after college or we all were too immature or oblivious to notice as fellow students? What went so wrong that alcohol and drugs became his outlet? Was there a clue there about why he didn't come to our wedding? Had we stayed in touch, could any of us have made a difference in helping him navigate the hazards of life as well as he navigated that Minnesota blizzard in the dark? What, if anything, could we have done to keep him from veering off course into living under a bridge? I will aways wonder.

I think of Charles sometimes when I pass other unhoused people on the street or at intersections, wondering about their stories and what lies behind their despair. Did they too once aspire to be doctors, lawyers, or scientists? How have we, as a community, failed them? How many of them will also end up in an emergency room shoeless and frozen?