Hot Coffee for Cliffy: A Meal Train for My Dad

Hi, I'm Lisa, and I’m writing today with an opportunity to help my dad, Cliff (Pop), who is experiencing an incredibly difficult time.

A little over a year ago, just before Thanksgiving, my dad and his wife lost their housing. Since the marriage to his current wife, my and my family’s relationship with Cliff had been very distant. We’d been estranged for a long time, with only sporadic text messages and the occasional holiday Denny’s visit to show for it. To be honest, his behavior had become erratic—his life was filled with smoking, drinking, and people who we didn’t want our young kids around. The dad I had known, the goofy, strict, joke-cracking man who helped raise me, was nowhere to be found. In his place was someone deeply sad, withdrawn, and unreliable. Our father-daughter relationship, which had been unraveling for two decades, finally fell apart as he stopped taking care of his mental health and his finances deteriorated.

So when Cliff and his wife reached out to us about being evicted, it was both heartbreaking and overwhelming. They had missed their chance to go to housing court, and the landlord was literally pounding on their door. They had no choice but to leave their apartment, and while we couldn’t take them in, we felt an obligation to try to help.

At first, we did what any middle-class, college-educated people would do: we tried to fix it. We put them up in a hotel for months, hoping the temporary solution would give us more time to figure out a real one. We reached out to social services looking for what we hoped would be a support system for homeless seniors—it turns out there is not much of one, especially for people like them. Cliff’s credit and income make him ineligible for most apartments in Massachusetts, and his poor rental history and mental health issues keep him from being accepted into public housing. For those same reasons, co-signing or having them live with us is out of the question. Right now, he’s staying in a shelter, and his wife (who left the shelter due to conflicts) is living in their van.

Over the past year, we’ve spent countless hours on the phone with social workers, trying to find something, anything, to help them get back on their feet. We were able to find a sober living halfway house in Maine for them, but they declined to take it. After decades of mental illness, (we suspect) substance use disorder, and emotional instability, Cliff and his wife are unwilling or unable to see a different way of life. We’re slowly accepting that we likely need to take legal action to make healthcare and housing decisions for him, but that’s going to take time.

That all brings us to now, this holiday season. An old acquaintance of Cliffy’s heard about his situation and reached out. They said that they wished they had known and asked if there was a way that they could help. It was a reminder of how isolated Cliff has become, and how we’ve kept this struggle mostly to ourselves. Our own shame that we did not have a solution and a deep sadness for them caused us to keep this almost entirely private. Unfortunately, by doing so, we isolated Cliff from those people who might be able to help him find himself again. And while we can’t change everything for him, we have thought of a small thing that we can do right now to connect him to his community and support us in supporting him.

We can help them get some hot, nutritious meals. Good nutrition is one of the first things to go when you’re stuck in survival mode and don’t have access to a fridge or proper cooking tools.

How you can help: Donate for a meal and send a note.

* We’re setting up a meal train to send Cliff one hot, healthy meal each week. Your help will buy him a warm, nutritious meal. We’ll DoorDash it straight to his shelter room.

* If you have a funny story or memory with Cliff, a scripture, or just a banging joke, we’ll include it with his meal and let him know who it is from. Maybe a reminder of who he used to be will spark some clarity or hope.

* You can also help by just sending a note. We’ll make sure it gets to him with the next meal we send.

If you know Cliffy and have kind words, memories, or jokes (honestly, just share jokes, you know that’s probably what he really wants) to share, please consider contributing. And if you’d like to pass this along to others who know him, please do so.

We’re hoping these small acts of kindness can remind him of the person he used to be, and help motivate him to take that first step toward change.

With love and gratitude,

Lisa