Loss – Opiate Nation

ANNIVERSARIES: CELEBRATIONS & MEMORIALS

August 2, 2026

Anniversaries are remembered for a host of different reasons: they mark events that are special to us for one reason or another. Important milestones in our lives. They are milestones that we can look back upon and see from the vantage point of having traveled some distance, usually with at least one other person as in a wedding or new job or new child. Birthdays are a type of anniversary as we celebrate another year of living.

They are times of reflecting on the past year or years and a shared journey in life –as two people or as a community or as a nation. The word comes from the Latin annus meaning ‘year’ and vertere meaning ‘turn’ – the turning of the year. And these anniversaries can be either a celebration or a memorial or sometimes both.

Anniversaries are a time to connect with others, with loved ones or people who hold the event as important. We ponder our shared history and the things that make a day particularly significant to us together. Public holidays are anniversaries of victories or tragedies or rituals of common traditions and core values and beliefs. These times of remembering together are honoring what people did and they build and strengthen bonds of community and friendship and love.

August 2^nd, is the 12^th anniversary of our son, JL’s, death from a heroin overdose. As you can imagine, it is not an anniversary celebration but a memorial. Yet memorials hold many of the same characteristics as other anniversaries: reflection, a shared journey, and honoring a person.

For us, the anniversary of JL’s death is a time for us to reflect, once again, on our son as a child whom we loved and who died too soon. To remember how much his 25 years enriched our lives and the things we learned from him. To remember the things that made him a great friend to others like his loyalty and sense of humor and his love. And of course there are the sad memories of how the opioid epidemic of the 2000’s swept him and so many others into addictions that ruined their lives before they even had time to grow up and experience life as an adult.

Memorials can also cause us to look to the future with a new sense of purpose and direction as we adjust to life without our loved one. This particular ‘epidemic’ has caused many, many parents and loved ones to work tirelessly in various ways to try to prevent other families from going through the trauma of having a child addicted to something that ruins their lives. All the recent efforts from small ones to large national organizations are memorials that have grown out of the ashes of these lives.

August 31^st is the 25^th anniversary of International Overdose Awareness Day (IOAD). For the millions of families and friends who lost their loved ones, it is an anniversary of remembering – a memorial for – all the accidental deaths of those who lost their lives in the greed-fueled scourge called the opioid epidemic.

Head to the new GIFT OF NEED YouTube channel and find podcasts with guests about addiction, drugs, trauma, grief. To hear our story, listen to Episodes #7 & #8.

https://www.youtube.com/@judedimegliotrang

Also, for information on IOAD and how you can help or find events:

International Overdose Awareness Day: 31 August

Why We Need to Learn to Grieve

Why Grieve? First, those who grieve well, live well. Second, and most important, grief is the healing process of the heart, soul, and mind. It is the path that returns us to wholeness. Until we do, we suffer from the effect of unfinished business.

~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Grief and Grieving, pg. 229

(Translation into most languages at tab to the right)

Like most people in Western societies, I was never taught how to grieve the loss of someone I loved. My family had not suffered the untimely loss of anyone close to us. Elderly grandparents passed and we would miss them, but quiet tears and sad faces was all I ever saw at those rare funerals. And grief is not something one normally thinks about when we are young. Unless it is a very close relative or friend, the empty space left by a person doesn’t drag us down to the depths of our soul when we are young and resilient.

When my younger brother died of AIDS at 40, it was the first death of someone I loved dearly and it was the first time I felt my heart break. I couldn’t seem to function because life had suddenly become dark and unknowable. If this could happen, anything could happen. I was afraid. How could I survive this? I had very few tools to help navigate the grief and didn’t know anyone who could empathize with this tragedy other than my husband John. My parents were devastated but mostly unable to talk about it. There were other deaths that followed: When my sister died of breast cancer that metastasized to her brain at 56. And when my youngest brother died a death of despair from suicide at 52. The feelings were much the same but by then I had one thing that helped. I knew from experience that I would survive.

Then in 2014, John and I experienced the most painful event of our lives. Our 25-year-old son died of an accidental heroin overdose. Today, he would have been 37. For this, we needed survival skills that went beyond the love and care of family and friends. Thankfully, we were introduced to On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler.(1,2) Knowing that everything we were feeling was normal was a comfort in and of itself. It is a guide for the process of grieving that has helped millions of people understand that grieving well takes time and cannot be rushed. These five stages follow a predictable pattern but are not necessarily linear or progressive because each response to loss is as unique as each loss. I wrote in detail about how we navigated the grief from our son’s death in Opiate Nation: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Acceptance. (3)

The Five Stages of Loss are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Disbelief was perhaps a better way to describe our denial – feeling paralyzed by this sudden shock, and an inability and unwillingness to face what happened. Our bodies and our souls were in so much pain. We didn’t want to believe that our son was really gone from our lives, from this earth. But this stage is where many people get stuck. Moving out of denial and facing the facts will not happen until we feel safe and know that we are ready to handle what really is.

Once we are ready to face reality, anger surfaces. It is part of the process of loss because anger brings a sense of temporary control we once thought we had and that is now gone. Kübler-Ross stresses that to not allow anger may slow down the grieving process. Many people, especially people of faith, avoid anger because isn’t “acceptable” and it is unthinkable to be angry at God. And there is an added sense of unfairness that complicates grief when the young die.

Bargaining is negotiating with reality while we vacillate between thinking there is something we can do and realizing there isn’t. The overwhelming pain involved with accepting reality causes us to alternate between hope and despair. John and my journal entries are full of “if only’s” and regrets, evidence that we tried to negotiate and somehow change the past.

Truly feeling the overwhelming feelings of the reality of the loss leads to depression. This was the most difficult aspect of grief and the longest for us. We had to face the fact that the place our son occupied was now empty. Learning to sit with our feelings of deep sadness was not easy. It was a slow slog through each day and night.

The final stage of grieving is acceptance. It makes change possible and makes our present circumstances bearable and even good. For people of faith, we surrender to God’s ultimate plan and it can bring peace, forgiveness, healing, and a newfound freedom. That allowed us to move forward to a better, although different, future. This is where we begin to see some of the gifts that have accompanied the loss.

Death is part of living as humans on this earth and death brings grief. It is one of life’s equalizers. Our learning to grieve well becomes a gift to others suffering through the death of a loved one as we also model how we mourn, which is the external part of loss. Learning to accept our humanness and our limitations helps us learn about grace and forgiveness, towards ourselves and others. When we experience grief, we have experienced the full cycle of being human. Greif transforms our broken and wounded souls and has the power to heal. Leo Tolstoy said, Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. And when we heal and continue to live after the loss of our loved one, this is the gift that grief gives us and that we can share with others.

The Elizabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation. https://www.ekrfoundation.org/elisabeth-kubler-ross/
David Kessler https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/
www.OpiateNation.com

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Biography

Dis-Couraged or En-Couraged?

Discouragement is the opposite of having the heart, the courage to face something. It’s when the heart has been sucked out of you. But the en in encouragement means “into”, the process of putting courage into someone. Giving them the heart and hope to go on.

(Translation into most languages at tab to the right.)

It’s time for a confession. I have not been writing many blogs for Opiate Nation in the past two years – not because I haven’t had time but because I have felt discouraged. Decades into the Opioid Epidemic and all the information and media coverage, the hope that addiction and deaths from drug overdoses would decrease has proven unfounded. It seems that people in general are just tired of hearing about it, especially if it doesn’t particularly concern them. And I have felt that I didn’t have anything helpful to add to the conversation and wondered: what more needs to be said?

But I felt reprimanded in my heart and soul for being one more person who is fatigued by the persistence of a problem that seems to never get better, let alone go away. What about all the people living in active addiction? And what about their friends and family who spend sleepless nights and anxious days worried about them? And what of those who have lost loved ones to addiction and are living in debilitating grief?

I started thinking about discouragement and how to “snap out of it”? For me, there is no snapping out of it on my own. Once I’m dis-couraged, I have found that only being en-couraged changes things. And encouragement usually comes to me through two avenues: a few intimate friends and God, both of whom know me well. The words spoken out loud by friends and the ones directly into my soul by God are what lift my troubled and discouraged heart and bring hope and courage.

Courage comes from Latin cor meaning “heart”. The dis in discouragement means “opposite of”. Discouragement is the opposite of having the heart, the courage to face something. It’s when the heart has been sucked out of you. But the en in encouragement means “into”, the process of putting courage into someone. Giving them the heart and hope to go on.

Although my life has not been characterized by addiction personally, encouragement has been important in my life, especially after my son died from addiction. How much more important would encouragement be to those struggling with addiction? And for the families and loved ones of those struggling or already lost? And how can we encourage without enabling?

So, I have been reminded of the importance of an encouraging word. Knowing this, how can I offer encouragement in the arena of addiction and Harm Reduction? Although people do recover from addiction and live full lives, there will always be people struggling with addiction and using drugs. When we acknowledge and accept this, we must try our best to help minimize the harm from that use in the ways we can. For me, that has been through writing to offer information, comfort, and encouragement.

Ghost Stories

(Short topical blogs based on Opiate Nation – translation into most languages in tab on right.)

When we hear the phrase “ghost stories” most of us think of scary and spooky stories shared around a campfire with the intended, and predicable, consequence of keeping us awake at night.

But when H Lee (aka Harris Insler) decided to call his new podcast series “These Ghosts Must Be Heard”, it wasn’t because he would be interviewing people with paranormal experiences. And although the stories his guests share aren’t scary in the ghoulish sense, they have kept their narrators awake at night for days, weeks, and months on end. John and I included. (To hear our interview with Harris, see links below for Podbean, Amazon, Spotify.)

https://theseghostsmustbeheard.podbean.com/

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3392919b-b8bc-46b4-a486-5e34b7d8dd1d/episodes/580578a3-691f-418a-a179-8bc5f72dd138/these-ghosts-must-be-heard-episode-2-jl

These are real-life experiences and these “ghosts” are the spirits of our deceased loved ones: children, friends, partners who have succumbed to premature and preventable deaths from opioid overdoses.

Gilded Grief

(Short topical blogs based on Opiate Nation – translation into most languages in tab on right.)

While reading Rising Strong by Brené Brown, I was struck by a thought she shared about our American culture and the absence of honest conversation and the hard work it takes for us to rise strong after a fall on our face – a failure. She worries that “this lack of honesty about overcoming adversity has created a Gilded Age of Failure.”

Gilding is a perfect word-picture for this characteristically human behavior: applying a very thin coating of gold to a plain, inexpensive object that gives it the appearance of gold. This is what we do when we are dishonest about our feelings. We are choosing to make our real, plain, and common story appear better than it is.

“We’ve all fallen…but scars are easier to talk about than they are to show with all the remembered feelings laid bare…We much prefer stories about falling and rising to be inspirational and sanitized…We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending.” (Rising Strong, Introduction)

Grief: Closure or Finding Meaning?

(Thirtieth in a series of topical blogs based on chapter by chapter excerpts from Opiate Nation. Translation into most languages is available to the right.)

When I finished writing Chapter 27, Grief Part 3: Accepting the Mystery, I didn’t realize what I had actually done. It was four years after our son had died, the pain from the first few years had diminished, I had gone through four of the Five Stages of Grief, and was moving forward in what I thought was the final stage, Acceptance. I was not dealing with denial, anger, bargaining, or depression any longer.

One day I was on a call with a friend. She was telling me her thoughts about the book and asked: “Do you realize what you have done?” No, I guess not. What? “You have gone through the sixth stage of grief: finding meaning. Your book was your way to find, and then share, meaning in the loss of JL’s life.”

She was right. But it wasn’t a goal I set out to accomplish. I think it was intuitive for me, something I had to do. Even after we finally accept the reality of a tragic loss in our lives, many of us want to find meaning. While we can’t find reason in the death, we can choose how we ascribe meaning to the life. I did not want JL’s life to seem meaningless.

Time & Eternity

(Twenty-seventh in a series of topical blogs based on chapter by chapter excerpts from Opiate Nation. Translation into most languages is available to the right.)

Death naturally brings up thoughts and questions about existence beyond this life, this earthly existence. I love how John Milton said it: “Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.” For us, after a death so intimate as our son’s, one can imagine how often we thought about it, particularly in the subsequent months.

One thought that continues to captivate John and I is the possibility that others can look into our time while they are in eternity, in heaven, like someone looking into a cell under a microscope at us, the human specimens. Or are they frozen in time, like being in a time capsule?

Six weeks after JL’s death, my journal entry highlights these questionings:

JL,

Mom here. I’ve been wondering, and wishing I knew the answer for sure, if you and others who are gone can hear us and are conscious of what is happening on earth and in our lives. Can you hear when Dad and I talk to you? If you can, I think you would be crying for us many times as you see and hear our pain. I hope we are not causing you any more pain…

Dad and I went out to dinner and talked about this. What he brought up was that eternity, by definition, is the absence of time as we know it here on earth. So, if those of you who are dead are also in “no time,” even though present with the Lord, you may not experience any consciousness between death and the final resurrection we believe in—it may just be a flash. Hmmm…I don’t like that concept. I want to know you hear me and my apologies and love and thoughts towards you.

Singer-songwriter Phil Keaggy’s song “Time” from his album Love Broke Thru expresses the limits in which Father Time exists:

My friend, David Such (a mechanical engineer, writer, artist) wrote a blog about the Elasticity of Time. Here is a relevant thought from that blog:

Most of us human beings are locked into “earth time” so it can sometimes be difficult to understand, but Einstein taught that “time” is elastic depending on one’s position, perspective, and velocity. I am merely a mechanical engineer and do not fully understand all the physics or all the mathematics, but I do understand the concept as follows. As we increase our velocity, we reduce the difference between our own speed and the speed of light. This is insignificant unless our velocity is extremely high. As we approach the speed of light, “time” slows to a standstill (and apparently, even “matter” takes on different shapes and densities).

Genesis One and the Elasticity of Time

In 1676, the Danish astronomer, Olaus Roemer, first successfully measured the speed of light: Lightspeed. For those of us who believe in God and that his intelligence designed the Universe, his words “Let there be light” have much significance. Eternity must at least be full of light, beyond time, beyond darkness and death. In death do we instantaneously exist in lightspeed and the absence of time?

If so, is JL zipping and zooming around the universe at lightspeed now, with all the other souls who have left this earthly constraint of time? I have no clue, but I smile at the thought.

Singing The Blues

(Eleventh in a series of topical blogs based on chapter by chapter excerpts from Opiate Nation. Translation into most languages is available to the right.)

Honesty is one of the main themes that ripple under the surface of “The Blues.” Expressions of honest feelings, whatever they may be at the moment – themes of lost love, painful relationships, dashed hopes, and heartache. The majority of us have or will experience heartache in our lives. Although it seems counterintuitive, most of us feel consoled by songs that express what we are feeling deep inside but may have a hard time putting into words. In order for me to be honest, I have to acknowledge that I am singing The Blues.

A Seismic Disturbance

(Tenth in a series of topical blogs based on chapter by chapter excerpts from Opiate Nation. Translation into most languages is available to the right.)

When there is a rupture in the earth’s crust it creates a seismic disturbance, the prelude to an earthquake. Something seismic happened deep inside us the day our son died – a fissure opened, and all our energy was expelled. What followed that shock was the onset of grief and, as with earthquakes, the aftershocks. But unlike earthquakes, the aftershocks of grief continue for days and months and even years.

The In’s and Out’s of Grieving & Mourning

(Eighth in a series of topical blogs based on chapter by chapter excerpts from Opiate Nation. Translation into most languages is available to the right.)

When I was young, I only went to one funeral. I can’t remember who it was for or where it was, but it must have been for a close relative or I wouldn’t have been there. I do remember seeing everyone dressed in black. It was a very somber setting, people talking in hushed voices, and I didn’t comprehend what was happening. I just knew everyone was sad. After that day, I never thought about that person again – and even if my parents thought about him or her, their acts of mourning seemed to stop with the funeral. And I had no knowledge of any grieving on their part because at that time and in their cultural setting, people kept feelings regarding their grief to themselves.

It wasn’t until 20 years ago when my younger brother died from AIDS that I was faced with a death that was so close I felt a personal loss that tore at my heart. There was no way to just quickly plan a funeral and burial and then move on. My life as I had known it, now had a gaping chasm where my brother had once been and it was not going to close up anytime in the near future. I needed someone who had travelled this path before me to guide me through the overwhelmingly disturbing and depressing feelings. None of my friends had experienced a close loss like this. So, I looked to the books that were most recommended: On Grief and Grieving by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.