[Random journal entries, covering a period from November 2004 to roughly 2006. At first I thought it would promote some form of spiritual healing. I also thought that it might keep my emotions from becoming bottled up. I'm not sure that I was successful in that endeavor. I don't believe these particular entries will be calming to anyone, but they will sound familiar. These are the voices in your head that you just can’t silence. Sharing these thoughts is just a very small step. At that time in my life I took refuge in a very simple mindset, because religion was too complicated. ]
I'm not sure I know how to relate to people anymore. But I know what I'm doing in one sense. As I look at what I write, I notice that there are four processes at work here. A clinging to memory. Tell stories. Lots of funny stories. An attachment to simple habits. Walking the dog and doing the dishes are the highlights of my day. A wallowing in anger, with an inability to decide what to focus it on. And a surrendering to sorrow. Just letting it gently wash over me.
Grief is simplified by a simple mindset. At this point that's my only goal.
And one other thing. I keep asking myself what is this about. Is it about my late son? Is it about my dog? Is it about God? Is it... wait, now I remember. So let's get on with it.
Anger is slippery, hard to cling to, as it constantly changes shape. You exhaust yourself chasing it. Anger, revenge, despondency, rage against God... most likely you will at least run aground on the island of anger, but it is dangerous to explore, and you need to cast off again as soon as you are able.
So now this. God says, in case you weren't paying attention the last time [my wife’s cancer], make sense of this. What? My son has to die so I can figure out your plan? I didn't verbalize it quite that way, but the sentiment was there, buried in the coldness that I felt around me. I was not sure where the expression cold as death comes from, but I knew now it was not a reference to the body of the deceased. It described rather how people feel in the presence of death.
The thoughts cling to one another like dust to static. The dealer who sold the fatal dose I learned was someone named M_, who lived in Atlanta. My son’s friends found out where he lived. Would I seek revenge? To what end? It seemed pointless. He would merely be replaced by another. I never asked them if they had confronted him. I didn’t want to know.
The distribution chain went on and on until you had government complicity near the top- agencies funding covert operations by allowing the importation of narcotics into the country. Pursuing the heroin trail led to more rage and paranoia.
Dwelling on the cost in wasted lives each time a child dies led to helplessness. What was an appropriate response? None of the above? Demonizing heroin has as one drawback the postponement of the grief process. But what is more constructive? Healing a shattered heart or channeling anger in an effort to rid ourselves of this scourge? Both?
No, these are not rhetorical questions, and they do not elicit easy answers. I have been wrestling with them for three years, and I'm still no closer to an answer.
Had I ever made a difference, I wondered? My wife and I had taken in many addicts from broken families, without judgement, and had loved them and fed them. They were invariably children with good hearts underneath their self-doubt and anger. The had been respectful and loving in return. But still we couldn't save them all, heal their addictions, elicit permanent change. Had we made any difference just by showing them love? Who knew...
So where do you start? How do you grasp an event like this? You recite a litany of facts, stringing them together in a futile belief that the sum of them will equal the horror in front of you. He had hepatitis C. His liver was 70 percent gone. The doctor had told him he had only a couple of years left to live. He had a hard lump in his abdomen that you could feel. He had not done heroin in over a year, and had completed his Methadone program.
Four of his friends had overdosed or committed suicide in recent years. He was tired of going to funerals. He had plans for he weekend, had his usual to do list prepared for the next day. He was in pain more and more in his abdomen, and was too tired to work like he was used to. He had travel plans. He died at home in his own room- an easier death, perhaps, than a drawn out death in a hospital from liver failure. We knew it would come sooner or later. He had warned us what the doctor had said. He was not an angry or violent young man. His impulsive and risk-taking behavior just needed dampening.
No matter how many times you add this all up, everything still comes up before and after.
Would the angels soon speak to me, I wondered? Would they summon God's wrath on the perpetrators of such injustice? I didn't think so. Wouldn't it be more likely that God would simply blot out the entire human race for their grievous sins? Definitely, I thought. Wasn't there an Old Testament story, though, about a town saved by the presence of one honest man? How about thousands of souls with love in their hearts, weighed against millions of sinners? But after all, we're all sinners. My thoughts are beginning to border on the lunatic now. Don't think so much, I tell myself.
Next week: Dog Walk