Putting a name to a story

I work in an area of the city where there are a lot of homeless people, and a lot of people living on the edges.  Over the past few months, I have slowly become acquainted with one of them.

She is older than me, a while ago she mentioned that she is 74.  I see her outside the building where I work most days.  She is standing there with a paper cup soliciting spare change from the people waiting for the bus.  I try to always have a dollar to give her when I see her.

Unlike many of the people I see begging in the neighborhood, I never see her smoking or drinking, and she never appears intoxicated.  She is never carrying a load of possessions, so I suspect that she probably at least has a roof over her head.  There are an abundance of residential hotels in the neighborhood, so perhaps whatever social security she receives covers all or part of that.

When I arrived at my building last Thursday, she was already there.  It was before 7 o'clock in the morning.  I don't recall her ever being there so early before. When I saw her I stopped a moment, and got out my wallet, pulled out a dollar bill.  Then I walked up to her and handed her the dollar as I prepared to enter my building.

Reaching inside of her coat, she pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.  She wished me Merry Christmas and I think I thanked her, I don't remember exactly what I said.  I put the envelope into an inside pocket of my overcoat.

When I got to my desk, I pulled out the envelope.  It was a little crumpled, closed with a piece of tape.  Inside was a Christmas card.  The only thing she had written inside was to sign her name.  It was Barbara.

Maybe her name is not Barbara, and she found the card already signed.  I don't know.  But I am am pretty sure that it was me she was waiting for to give the card to,

What kind of a world have we made, where just giving someone a dollar three or four times a week is so important to them?  And what sort of a monster really believes that we should be solving our financial woes by cutting social security, and throwing more people out onto the street?