Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007160184
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: J. PETER SABONIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If suicide is the ultimate expression of self-centeredness, then Mitch's critics were right. He was an egotist. His good works and compassion to the homeless were a posing of sorts, saved only for the camera's eye.
Yet, suicide is perhaps the ultimate paradox. A private act, yet public. A dramatic goodbye, yet no goodbye at all. A lie and denial, to onlookers who choose to live. A truth, and perhaps acceptance, to those who do not. And thus the living will always grope to understand it.
But suicide is certainly the culmination of hopelessness. How could Mitch Snyder lose hope?
This was the man who lived with the hopeless, and taught them that deep within themselves there was power and not despair. That with direct concerted action, they could get what all of us are entitled to: a place to call home, a place to belong, a place to gain refreshment or to hide.
This was the man who, four years ago, taught a roomful of volunteer attorneys for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless that before we could serve, we had to understand. Before we could be lawyers for the homeless, we had to become homeless. That some time in a shelter or on a steam grate would provide more wisdom and motivation to drive us than any law book or desire to remedy injustice.
I, like many, accepted that challenge. I, like others, cut short my time because I became bored, melancholy and depressed. I remember my night at Mitch's shelter on 2nd and D streets in northwest Washington before its renovation. Its squalid condition was wearying enough, but when combined with its large number of seemingly able-bodied adult residents engaged in aimless pursuits, it was truly a cave of despair.
And yet that was where Mitch lived and slept each night. And that night, when I saw him in a dimly lighted upstairs bathroom, his face drained by yet another fast, peering at me shroud-like through the darkness, I started. This man had a portion of the Spirit that I did not. This man had seen the stone rolled away. This man had had a vision of the beyond.
But something went askew. Somehow, something was lost. That it is linked to love is no surprise. For we are born to love and to be loved. But there are those who unfortunately understand all too well what it is like to be drawn to and be comfortable with the distant and unlovable, yet to struggle with those who are closest.
Perhaps that was why Mitch was with the homeless, the hopeless, the dispossessed. Perhaps he keenly felt their alienation, their abandonment, their despair in a much more personal way than the rest of us.
What is shocking is that Mitch was the one who gave up hope. He, who reminded all of us that appearances and circumstances were only superficial. He who showed us by example that within the mask of a "bag lady" or a "wino" there resided something sacred, something lovable, something deserving of dignity, care and respect.
Peter Maurin, a founder of the Catholic Worker movement which has been serving the homeless for more than 50 years, used to say, "We can't expect to run to meet the world with our message and not fall flat on our faces. We've got to take that risk."
Mitch took that risk. And he fell. I do not know what tripped him. In a sense, it does not matter.
The cause continues, his spirit endures, his legacy abounds. And yet Mitch Snyder killed himself: the cause, a mystery; his spirit, inexplicably AWOL at a critical time; and one legacy, that none of us is immune.
by CNB