time for grief – 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.

Memories

I am surprised when, although it has been over four years since our son died of a heroin overdose, memories surface and grief follows. The surprise comes because the memories seem to come ‘out of the blue’, from no particular trigger and for no particular reason.

My husband just had a memory that was triggered when he heard our seven year old granddaughter express trepidation over seeing a bird that had died and fallen into the back yard. It was as if our son was seven again, full of wonder and normal childhood fears. His voice, his emotions, him.

I have had memories of our son as I’ve been working in our daughter’s garden or driving to the grocery store. JL as a young adult, just his face in some everyday interaction, triggering the sadness that he is no longer on this earth, part of our life, living the life that most 29 year olds are living.

It seems that memories don’t need a reason to rise to the surface from out of our hearts. Our son has been in our hearts since the day he was born and he continues to live there. It is the strongest ‘evidence’ we have that life does not stop after we die and physically leave the land of the living. We are eternal beings and I am very thankful for that.

Holidays

Holidays – a time for family reunions, shared meals, communal celebrations, watching favorite movies together, reminiscing over photographs and discussing hopes and dreams for the next year.

For many families of opiate addicts, there will be an empty place on the sofa or seat at the table. If 60,000 individuals have died this year alone, the number of people affected by those deaths is multiplied by two parents, siblings, relatives, and friends: the circle of people who knew and loved our addicted ones could be in the hundreds. If even only 10 people were impacted by the death of one addict each year, there are over half a million new surviving and grieving individuals this holiday season alone. How many more from the last decade?

For my husband and I, this is our third Christmas without our son. We can say that it is not as painful as it was three years ago, but there is still the sense that things are not as they should be. This excerpt from Roger Edwards’ article “Don’t Grieve Like the Rest of Men” from The Barnabas Letter, July 2001, p 4-5 continues to help us:

“What is hard in microwave, quick fix, America is that grief takes time. By necessity, the implications must seep and settle into all the parts of our lives. The process is inherently long, occurring slowly and over real time. Twelve months is a wise time span to remember as you grieve. Give yourself at least a full cycle of holidays, birthdays, and seasons to suffer the loss. But a year doesn’t cover it either. There are longer cycles in our lives. Loss slowly infiltrates all the corners of our lives. It wakes us late at night with memories, reintroduces itself to us when we run across pictures or possessions, and recurs during cycles of holidays and anniversaries.

We wonder, isn’t there any other way to make it through loss? But there isn’t. There is just one honest way to respond to loss. That way is to grieve. Christian grief peers into the hideous face with brutal honesty and tells the truth by deeply experiencing the loss…it mourns, it sometimes even wails. Grief is there to walk with us through despair. Everyone else fights death and loss by pretending. The grieving fight death by the truth. Death is real and is as hideous as it is real. Grief knows that death is the enemy. And it tells the truth with sorrow.”

I wish I had a magic potion for all who are grieving a loss for the first time this holiday season. I don’t. What I can offer is what I have experienced: openly telling the truth not only helps us grieve, it helps others in ways we may never know. As we honestly (and selectively) shared our feelings, we availed ourselves of empathy and comfort from those who love and care for us. And they gained understanding about grief and joy from knowing they were helping us walk through our dark times.

And in the broader scope of a nations’ corporate suffering, it is only by openness and honesty that the tide will begin to turn as solutions are found that will prevent the scourge of addiction from robbing our families of their loved ones and the joy of holidays together.