losing an addict – Opiate Nation

A Lament and A Love Song – for Our Son

Lament for a Son is an intensely personal tribute by Nicholas Wolterstorff to his 25-yr-old son who died in a climbing accident. It is eloquent and unforgettable as he gives voice to a grief that is both unique and universal: the tortured pain of losing an individual, a child, your child.

We lost our 25-yr-old son to a heroin overdose six years ago on August 2, 2014. Lament for a Son has been one of our go-to books since that time. Wolterstorff expresses the incomprehension and sense of unfairness that, I believe, parents worldwide feel when they lose a child – someone who is supposed to bury you, not the other way around. It doesn’t fit with the cycle of life we expect – it is jarring, unsettling, bewildering, frustrating, disquieting.

In the Preface he relates:

A friend told me he gave a copy of Lament to all of his children. “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s a love song,” he said. That took me aback. But, Yes, it is a love-song. Every lament is a love song. Will love-songs one day no longer be laments?

Yet, while the book expresses the common feelings brought on by sudden unexpected death, what he doesn’t share with those of us who have lost a child to drug/alcohol addiction are the previous long years, sometimes decades, of turmoil, anxiety, fear, and depression that we experience on top of all the normal grief.

And shame.

There is no glory in being the parent of someone who is an addict or alcoholic.

OPIATE NATION WINS NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE® AWARD

With so much distress in the world with the Covid-19 Pandemic, especially the effects it is having on the weakest and vulnerable members of our societies, I have hesitated to announce a personal accomplishment. Yet, my hope is that as Opiate Nation gains more visibility, it will get into the hands of people who could be most encouraged and benefit from our story.

I am a member of a group of 35,000 women called “The Addict’s Mom” on Facebook. I confess, I rarely read the posts because it is so depressing: Story after story of mom’s who have been holding out for years to see their daughter or son released from the hell-hold of addiction to drugs, only to then post that “…today I lost my daughter/son…can someone tell me how I will survive this?” It is for these mom’s and dad’s and siblings and friends that we wrote Opiate Nation, but one of the stipulations of being a member of the group is no self-promotion. So I hope that, with more visibility and more reviews and re-posts on social media, our book will get to these most desperate of people.

Grieving The Living

For many, 2017 was a year of loss: a job, a home, a relationship, an opportunity. For between 120,000 parents to well over a million friends and relatives of the 60,000 persons who died from opiate overdoses in 2017, the new year will be a continuation of the grief process. Once we are forced to enter this unexpected, unwanted, and uncharted new territory, we have no choice but to travel through it. With support from our communities of friends and God’s love, we will somehow come out on the other side. If we have grieved honestly and fully, we will be better people who see others through different eyes.

But what about those who are living with a loved one in active addiction, or in a recovery program for the umpteenth time, or whose whereabouts are unknown? What is their 2018 going to be like? I can tell you, because my husband and I were there a few years ago. We were in constant flux between hoping against hope as we prayed and waited for a miraculous change, and discouragement and depression as we watched our young adult son struggle against an unrelenting foe. We were grieving the loss of the son we loved and raised and had hoped to see move successfully into adulthood. We were grieving the living.

Dr. Susan D. Writer wrote an excellent article on “Grieving the Living” posted on the Coalition For Healthy Minds website: http://cahmsd.org/grieving-the-living. The short article is well worth the read, but here are a few highlights:

“For those of us who have a loved one who struggles with mental illness or addiction, we are all too aware of how we can ‘lose the living’. When that individual is in the throes of…any unmanaged mental illness or addiction, their behaviors are altered. They are not themselves – or at least not the version of the people that we have grown to know and love. In some instances…we can only watch as they spiral down a dark or dangerous path. No matter what the outcome, our relationship with this loved one changes as a result of what we are experiencing, separately and together, and we often feel a deep sense of loss. But we must grieve the relationship of the past if we are to create a new one in its place for the future…though there may be remnants of the person we knew ‘before’ the illness or addiction, the change has occurred and all of us must learn to adapt… But we all must honor these changes in our loved ones and recognize that if we are to have any relationship with them we need to learn to adjust and adapt on our end… Grieving is a process and a necessary part of life…In order for us to realize the potential for a new relationship, with new opportunities for connection and intimacy, we must grieve the old relationship, and essentially ‘grieve the living’ to allow for life to move on… On the other side of grief is growth. And on the other side of grief is also acceptance and peace. But most importantly, on the other side of grief is love.”

I don’t know if while grieving our living son we ever got to consistent acceptance and peace, but the love between us all remained, even up to his last phone call to us the night before his death. And for that, I am eternally thankful.