ungrateful

The family are irritated.

I’ve received the following comments on the blog – I’ve chosen to show them this way to protect the privacy of all concerned:

Dear Dennis

I just want to inform you that everything you wrote is not the truth. My parents did EVERYTHING they could have done for Calvin! My mom was furious when she saw Calvin drunk! He went and bought himself alcohol. NO ONE gave him ANY alcohol to drink. And i really don’t know how he can say that he’s sick of steak, because i wouldn’t expect those kind of words from someone who lived on the streets all his life! That’s just ungratefulness!!!

But in any way. Everyone did what they could and all I can say is: May God be with him and forgive him for all his lies.

and

??? … and I think you believe everything “Calvin” says…??? We did our best for him!!! Mom looks 10 years older than she was!!! Nobody will ever know what we went throught this last year, all mom’s tears… sadness, she is still heart broken.

“Calvin” had a lovely room, with a double bed, a TV in his room, the best meal every night!!! We didn’t even wanted him to work, and mom and dad still paid him a “salary” for working in our garden and around the house… what more does he want??? This is a choice he made… he is the one that wanted to go back to Cape Town

and my Facebook wall has been graced with this:

“Hi Dennis…  Just wanted to let you know we dont appreciate what you wrote on “trambellings”…  It’s a slap in OUR FACES!!!  You are quite ill informed.  Please, in the future, get your facts straight before you write something that’s NOT TRUE!  Thanx M”

They obviously feel that I wrote the “So Grateful” article with the intent of slandering them. On the contrary,  I think they did an amazing job. Who else do you know who would take a homeless man into their home? Your mom is a wonder! She should never feel less of herself – what she did in the hope of restoring this man is entirely worthy of the greatest applause.

I do not believe what Calvin says. In his eyes everything that has ever happened to him was someone else’s fault.

This is indeed a choice he has made. That there are no doubt homeless people who are there because circumstance led them there, I have no doubt, but Calvin’s case is not one of these.

Calvin believes the world owes him something. Everything he has been given is not good enough, he has to have his rights – the right to scream out like a child when he is drunk, “Ek is nie n kinder nie” (I’m not a child)!.

Calvin fairly and squarely deserves the place he has found himself. Ungrateful seems such a small word to use for a man who has taken everything and thrown it back into the face of those who care. For any person expecting to not have to fit in with the constraints of society, a life of hardship is a given. That he was rescued from such a place and found himself in the heaven described above, and yet chooses to have a tantrum and walk out in the manner he did has only one word – stupidity!

Yes, Calvin is ungrateful. Yes, your mom did a really good thing. Yes, we have all learnt a lot in this episode. I don’t regret it having happened, I wonder only that a man can go so far down, and still not see his fault.