I just read a hospital report. One of my homeless patients has died.
Cardiac arrest secondary to a number of serious co-morbidities.
He was a sweet guy battling all sorts of problems related to a history of IV heroin use. He'd been clean for a while, but his health was just too poor to keep him going. I was grateful to read that his family, whom the hospital had summoned, wanted him placed on comfort care, rather than insist on painful and useless interventions. He was in no pain when he died.
I always enjoyed my visits with him. He was a super guy...
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I know how much you truly care about your patients. 
I hadn't seen him in about 6 months. I'm going to miss him...
But at least he was surrounded by the people he loved, and in a safe, warm place when he died.
We take these things for granted, don't we? But for the homeless, nothing can be taken for granted.
You have a good heart, as did he...I know he also enjoyed your visits.
Safe passage to him.
I've heard from doctors that the first death is often the hardest. Don't know if he was your first, but you did all you could for him, his family was with him at the end, and it sounds like he had a "good death".
I really wish we could start treating addiction like the health problem it is, not as a moral issue.
I've had about five or six since I started in practice. It doesn't get easier, though.
Thank you for your kind words, u4ic.
Very few of us are so up close and personal with death on a regular basis.
I was told that young doc's are so full of hope to save people, filled with the wonders of modern medicine, etc and that first death makes them recognize its - and their - limits.
It takes a special person to work with the marginalized in society. 
After all the hard work to get clean, and when they were able to enjoy being straight, BOOM..the bottom falls out.
Realistically we know that is a possibility, but somehow it feels different than a death while using. 
but glad about he received comfort care.