Chapter 55
FIFTY-FIVE
ANDY
Two months later
Up to sixty percent of people relapse within the first year of sobriety. I know this because I've spent hours online looking for answers I knew I'd never get, but I'd been desperate to understand what made a person turn to drugs for comfort.
I've been trying to find answers since I received the call in the middle of the night a week ago.
Why do people with an addiction relapse after completing a treatment program?
After going through all the steps, attending the meetings, experiencing life sober, and fighting every day for months to recover, what makes them turn back to doing drugs?
What makes them decide to pick up the bottle or load the needle?
I've been searching for answers, hoping to make sense of this, but no matter what, I can't.
Months of sobriety were thrown away in a matter of seconds.
Why? Was the momentary high worth it?
"I'm sorry, there was nothing we could do. It was a heroin overdose."
That emotionless voice on the phone, delivering the worst news of my life, has been haunting me all week.
I slide my hands down the front of my black dress to smooth out the wrinkles as the pastor speaks about life, death, and some other bible verse that I've tuned out long ago.
Beside me, my daughter wears a matching black dress, arms wrapped tight around the stuffed animal she brought as she stares at the cream-colored coffin in front of us.
She's too young to understand death. All she knows is that she will never see someone she loves again, and it makes her sad, but it isn't completely understood.
There are sniffles from one of the people around me, and I'm tempted to turn around and ask them why they're crying.
Are they suffering this loss?
No, I'm the one suffering, but you don't see me blowing my nose loudly, sniffling, and sobbing.
Instead, I stand stoic, eyes fixated on the casket that holds someone I love.
Someone I loved.
As if the day couldn't get any worse, the skies mourn with me and become as gray and gloomy as my mood. Though, unlike me, the sky cries.
Heavy raindrops fall on my skin, but I don't move to seek shelter or wipe them from my face.
Instead, I let them fall upon me, welcoming the chill that sets in the empty pit of my dark, tainted soul.
Why is it that it always rains during funerals? Is it the universe ensuring you remain in a gloomy mood? As if it were possible to be happy when you're burying someone you love.
Diane Harris gave in to her demons, and her addiction consumed her and stole her life.
Drugs stole my mother.
What was her final thought as she lay there dying?
Did she think of me?
Did she regret what she did?
Was she scared?
Why did she decide to load that syringe?
Why wasn't I enough for her?
I'm mourning, but not in the way everyone expects me to.
I mourned the loss of my mother long ago. She was dead to me long before she took her final breath, but this is final.
Unlike most children who lose a parent, I'm not left with fond memories. Which is why when the pastor asked if I wanted to say a few words, I declined.
My mother wasn't friends with any of the people around me. Most of them talked shit about her, yet here they are, standing beside me and crying as if they have anything to miss.
Diane and I were never going to have that mother-daughter relationship.
When we met at the café that day months ago, I agreed to a friendship. That's the only capacity she's ever had in my life. It was too late to become the mother I needed. We were friends getting to know each other. Over these months, I realized that not only did she not know me, I didn't know her.
Diane Harris was more than an addict.
She was a daughter who had dreamed of becoming an artist and sketched every chance she got. She had notebooks full of incredible drawings she'd kept over the years.
She attended community college but dropped out after meeting a boy who promised her the world. Desperate to leave our small town, she moved to Texas with him.
He was the one who got her hooked on drugs, and a year later, she was back on her parent's doorstep as a drug addict, someone they hardly recognized.
From that point forward, her life was full of ups and downs, struggling to get sober but giving up after weeks. The longest she'd been sober was while she was pregnant with me.
But I wasn't enough to keep her that way. She returned to her trusted pipe when I was barely a few months old.
Losing her has made me reevaluate the way I think about people with an addiction.
I’ve thought of them as weak.
They're not weak. They didn't choose that life.
Addiction is a disease.
It's not a choice.
No one wakes up one day and thinks, You know what, today is a great day to become addicted to drugs.
No child in school is telling their classmates they aspire to become an addict when they grow up.
All it takes is once to become addicted.
One hit from the pipe.
One drink from the bottle.
One pill prescribed by a doctor.
One shot with the needle.
Your life can change in a matter of seconds.
Everyone views drugs as hard shit, but what some don't realize is that you can become addicted to the legal opioids you receive from the doctor. It happens too often.
My entire life, I judged my mother for her addictions. I considered her weak because she gave in to the devilish lure of drugs instead of being strong enough to fight it.
The lure of heroin doesn't discriminate.
My mother wasn't weak.
Declan wasn't weak.
People with addictions are not weak.
They’re victims.
They’re fighting a silent battle that many people battle every single day.
They're not weak because they're addicted.
One thing I'll never forget about my mother is the days she went without food because of me. Many nights I listened to the sound of her stomach rumbling with hunger. Each time I offered her food or asked why she wasn't eating, she'd say she wasn't hungry or her stomach was making that noise because she had a stomachache. As a kid, I never thought too much of it and didn't question it as I ate my frozen microwave meal.
Using her last few dollars, even digging for change in the bottom of her purse to buy me food from the dollar menu. One night, I remember sitting at a table in the park during summer because our power was cut off, and that damn Nevada heat was no joke. Being inside was hotter than being out. We'd taken my piggy bank with us, and there on the park's picnic table, we laid out a piece of cardboard so the change wouldn't fall through the holes in the metal table, and we counted the change. It was less than five dollars, but it was enough for two cheeseburgers and a drink from the dollar menu.
After we got our food, she sat and watched me eat with a smile, all while her stomach rumbled in hunger. When I tried to offer a bite or a drink, she denied me each time, an excuse ready to go.
There were moments with my mother when her true self peeked out, but it was hard because so many of those moments were drowned out by her addiction. Every selfless moment was followed by something unpleasant.
I remember the rare nights she'd tuck me into bed, kiss me on my forehead, and say, "I love you with all my big, fat, purple heart." Apparently, when I was younger, I'd thought hearts were purple, so it had stuck.
I'll remember the times I sat in the backseat while she drove, and we screamed along to Hinder, Nickelback, and Faith Hill.
She knew all the words to every Nickelback song.
And "Breathe” by Faith Hill was her favorite song.
I remember my fifteenth birthday. She hadn’t said anything to me all day long, and I was afraid she’d forgotten what the day was, and I didn’t want to remind her. When I came home from my date with whatever grown man I had no business being with, she surprised me with a chocolate ice cream cake. We didn’t have money, so I knew she stole it, but I didn’t care, because at that moment, I was all that mattered to her. She’d stuck a large yellow plastic spinning candle in the center, and neither of us suspected it was a sparkler when she lit it. The plastic melted and set off the fire alarm, but our laughter drowned out the sound. It was the best birthday I’d ever had with her. For that moment, I was what was important to her. Not her friends waiting in her bedroom with a loaded pipe, me. I was her priority. Even as I sat in my bedroom eating cake alone twenty minutes later, I still cherished those moments.
I wouldn't say I hated my mother, but my anger toward her has always clouded my judgment and feelings toward her. Most days, I found it impossible to forgive her.
Impossible to forgive her for robbing me of the chance of having a mother. Of having a normal childhood. One that wasn't filled with fear, packed bags, and worrying about where I would sleep or how bills would be paid.
At the same time, I've learned to understand that her addiction robbed her of a life, too.
Diane Harris wanted to be someone.
She wanted to be an artist and travel the world.
She wanted the kind of love you see in movies.
And she wanted to be my mom.
Diane Harris wanted a lot out of life, but drugs stole her future.
I'll never know what led her to relapse after five months of sobriety.
Those five months with her are months I will forever cherish.
I remain standing above my mother's casket long after the crowd leaves, Max safely in the car with Lucy, waiting for me to join when I'm ready.
Reaching down, I grab a handful of dirt. The rain begins pouring, drenching me, and my dress sticks to my skin as chills take up residence in my numb body .
The cold dirt turns into mud in my hand, falling in clumps on the casket that lowers into the ground.
"I forgive you," I whisper the words that my mom had desperately wanted to hear while she was alive. Every time she apologized to me, I brushed it off, waiting for the moment she'd fuck up and break her promise, and the apology would become meaningless.
The first tear falls down my cheek, mixing with the heavy rainfall.
"I forgive you," I repeat, increasing the volume of my voice. The anger and resentment I've been carrying for years lifts from my shoulders, my heart aching.
I've lost everyone I have ever loved.
As if the angels above heard my confession, the rain stops, sunlight peeking through the dark clouds, shining its warmth down on my cold skin.
Turning away from the hole in the ground, I catch sight of a broad back several feet away, and without even seeing his face, I know it's him.
Declan .
Every instinct inside of me wants to run to him. To fall into his arms and cry and beg for him to help me through this pain, but I don't. I remain standing on the damp grass with my heels sinking into the earth where my mother will forever reside.
I watch him as he creates distance between us, and I let it happen.
I let him walk away while I stand rooted in place, watching him go.
He never looks back.