James Anthony Hudson "Jim", 17th August 1993 - 11th May 2026

Today we said an emotional goodbye to a much loved member of the Ark family - Jimmy Hudson. In a packed celebration of life at Shrewsbury Crematorium, friends and family gathered to remember a dear son, brother, uncle, grandson and friend.

We shared memories of a kind and gentle soul, who brightened up every room he entered, even on his darkest days.

Homeless does not mean unwanted, addict does not mean unloved. Jimmy was loved by many and will be hugely missed by us all.

He was deeply proud of his family, who supported and loved him through every challenge. It was an honour to host his wake in the day centre where we grew to know and love him, through the good times and the bad.

We would like to share a poem written by one of our volunteers in memory of Jimmy and all the others we have had the honor to know and love, but who left us far too soon.

These words truly reflect the struggle life presents to the people suffering on our streets, battling with mental health and addiction, sometimes the fight is just too much.

How Do You Measure a Life - For Jimmy and all the others.

How do you measure a life, length, breadth

Height and depth, weigh its worth

That child hanging upside down from bar or branch

Hopscotching on the pavement, carefree

What do you want to be when you grow up we ask

An astronaut, bus driver, pop-singer, footballer, famous

Until the darkness comes, a house full of anger

Fist and boot where love should have been

Worse, bed no longer safe, slow slide into chaos

Now he’s gone you might think his life

Didn’t amount to much, no house, no job,

No wife, no children, no money, no car,

Yet he was loved by strangers

Lived with nothing, a rucksack and a sleeping bag

Survived on the street for years

When others would have given up

Shared what little he had

He was that sleeping bag curled

Like a foetus on the pavement

That hooded figure propped against a wall

Politely thanking a passer-by who’d

Bent down to offer a coffee or sandwich

The one you pass and think, drunk

Beer can in his fist sleepwalking it seems

As he puts one unsteady foot in front of another

Like a monk or mystic meditating

Staring into the face of god

Through long nights, endless days

He lived in the moment, past too painful

Future a blank, too difficult to contemplate

Out there on the edge, in that zone

Alone, where any of us could end up

Through no fault of our own

All illusions gone, in freefall, no safety net

Nothing to hang on to, to hold him here

Orbiting our comfortable lives, asking why

Now he’s gone, there’s an absence

A sadness of what might have been

May he rest in peace we say, struggle over

Oblivion, maybe that’s what he wanted,

No longer blaming himself for what happened

Traces, all that’s left, a photograph, our memories,

His unsteady smile, his voice coming

From deep within, far away out of the mist

Like a child thankful for a hug as if

In that held moment he felt perhaps

He deserved to be loved, forgave himself

Last time I saw him he’d got a room of his own

Where others had been before

Talked of getting himself clean,

Had survived on the street for years

Could do it but no longer wanted to

Felt he could reach for a different life

So what happened when the mist began to clear

And he looked up, the future too steep to climb

A tangle of expectations and complications

Or when he’d found shelter and his body

Just give up, not used to warmth and comfort

When we gather to remember him

We’ll be surprised by all we didn’t know

The other lives he led, people

Whose lives he’d touched, who tried

To reach him and maybe did for a while

Gave them hope, we’ll realise how little

We really knew of who he was

Regret how little time we took, how

It’s impossible to measure a life, length,

Breadth, height and depth, weigh its worth

Rest easy Jimmy. Your struggles are over, but you will never be forgotten.