“If I die, Booger’s gonna die. And if Booger dies, I’ll die.” When I departed on an Appalachian Service Retreat, I expected to see people living in poverty. I expected to feel sad and compassionate for the people I help. I didn’t expect to meet a man named Jeffrey so excited to have company, and his best friend Booger.
On our first day of work, we saw a dilapidated house that seemed like it had the potential to be better on the inside, but that was not what we found; the whole reason for his moving was because the floor was caving in. We began moving chairs and tables out of the house and saw bugs on the floor and a cushion that a rat had chewed through. In the beginning, we didn’t talk much. It was as if the other girls and I silently agreed to not talk about what we saw. I’ve seen news stories about people living in poverty and learned about it in school and known it was there, but this was the first time I have seen it first-hand. I was four hours away from my suburban town, but it felt like I could be on a whole different planet. Once the pick-up truck was filled, we drove to Jeffrey’s new house. I was expecting …show more content…
He told us that he was gay and when he told his parents, they didn’t talk to him for sixteen years. He didn’t see them for twenty. His health dwindled down; he had to use an oxygen tank. He told us that he had died and been brought back eight times from various reasons. The next day, another group told us that one of those times was a suicide attempt.
He had a dog that was eight years old, skin and bones, bald, diabetic, and blind, but he loved that dog unconditionally. So much so that he had a life insurance policy of $150,000, but only if they took Booger (the dog), too. He told us that “if I die, Booger’s gonna die. And if Booger dies, I’ll die,” and that he was afraid Booger wouldn’t make it through the move. A week after we left Appalachia, we learned that Booger died three days after the