William "Live Every Day"

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RANDY BACON

I’m homeless because I can’t really get my life together at the moment. Because of the death of my daughter.  It’s really hard to talk about.  At the moment, I just chose it. One of these days I’ll get my life back in order.  Which I had my life back in order until that happened. It was a blow to my heart.  It’s hard to bury your kids, man.  I’m supposed to go before them. I’ve got a son.  Actually, he’s the one that came up and told me what had happened. I jumped his butt - I thought he was lying to me.  I said “Don’t ever say that about your sister”.  He kept saying “Pops, I’m not”.  And then I knew.  I just fell to the ground. It still rocks my world to this day.  I can’t sleep, I can’t do nothing. I would actually be surprised if I got a full night’s sleep.  I sleep for an hour, wake up. I hear her voice, yelling “Pop” or “Dad”.  I’ll wake up and answer her, and then it dawns on me, then I try to go back to sleep for 20 minutes, half an hour.  I just don’t sleep.  It’s been going on since that happened.  I’m not really worried about a job right at the moment because I can’t get it out of my head.  One of these days it will happen.  Until then, I mourn her death.  Every single hour. Every minute.  Every day. 

I want people to know I’m a human being and a nice guy, instead of some asshole piece of shit on the street.  Look at me like a human, not a piece of shit.  I don’t have a dream right now - I just take life as it goes.  Every hour, on the hour.  Right now it’s all about my daughter and my son - well, really it’s about my daughter.  You know what I mean?  My son sees that - he says “Do what you need to do, Pop”.  If it weren’t for him - he’s the one that actually keeps me going.  If something ever happened to him, I would be out of this world quick.  My life will end.  Promise.  

The advice I would give to people on living each day to the fullest - it’s hard.  It’s hard figuring out how to live every day.  Especially where you’re going to park your head every night. That’s my problem right now.  You lay your head down and you either have a cop yelling at you or you have a park ranger yelling at you. Try to park your head in the park - they find you. Where we camp right now?  The park ranger comes through, looking.  We aren’t doing nothing wrong.  We don’t trash the place - see, that’s what gets people riled up - you can’t blame them.  Just put your trash in a bag and throw it.  It ain’t that damn hard. Just take it as it goes.  It’s hard.  Hard to live it day by day. Especially finding a meal every day. Feels like you’re waiting there all day long. They need to fix things.  I just live life as much as I can.

Tommy is part of the ongoing project and art exhibition, The Road I Call Home. To see more portraits and stories, click HERE