Dark Place Called Addiction

Well, you did it. You’re dead. Your body is lifeless and now we wait for someone to find you. Who knows how long it will take, but your friends and family are either sleeping or coming home from work when they get the call saying that you are dead.

The police have been called and now the coroner. They place your body in that bag you’ve seen a hundred times on TV and haul you to the morgue. They make the first call to your family to tell them you’re gone and someone needs to identify your body.

Your mom and I are at the morgue sitting in the hall. It’s cold in here and I can’t control the tears. The medical examiner approaches and escorts us to the area where we identify you. I can’t swallow. I can barely breathe. I grab your hand; it’s cold. I run my fingers through your hair, it was always so soft. I can feel the staples from when they performed your autopsy. The tears fall from my face on to your hand and it brings the only sign of life to your corpse. Your mom is sobbing and we hold on to each other as we leave the room. This is not the way we wanted to say goodbye to you. If only I had one more chance to talk to you. One more hug. One more kiss. One more anything.

We’ve tried so many times to help and have spent a lot of time getting you in the right rehab center. I don’t understand. Why do you go back to the drugs? Why have you lied when all we’ve wanted to do was help you? How have we failed you? We don’t understand.

I think we have contacted everyone we know about your death. I have to call off work so I can meet with the funeral director and close all of your accounts around the city. We look at casket options and then discuss cremation. It’s hard to decide since we hardly talked about this. Why would we? You were so young.

Oh, my God, do I bury you in your favorite hoodie? I can’t bear the thought of cremation, but it’s probably the right thing to do. You did say you preferred that. We can’t decide but have no choice. Where do we bury you? Who keeps your ashes? It’s hard to fight back the tears and uncontrollable sobbing as the funeral director hands me a tissue.

It’s the day of your funeral service and people are starting to arrive. There are lots of tears and I can see anger on some of the faces. Some people are really mad at you and I don’t blame them. It’s hard to stand here, next to your dead remains, trying to console the line of people here to pay their last respects. I am numb.

Life will never be the same without you. I think about you every single day. We decided that I am keeping your urn and it has been a struggle sorting through all of your clothes trying to figure out what to do with everything. Your brother is flying into town to say his goodbyes. We kept the watch I gave you at Christmas. We knew how much you loved it and will never forget the smile on your face when you opened it.

I guess you’ll never really know how much you were loved. And we’ll never fully understand why your body had to choose drugs over life. We hope you are resting peacefully, free of addiction and we hope you know how hard we all prayed for you.

For all of my friends on here whom have a loved one struggling with addiction, hug them and tell them that you love them. And then fight like hell to get them back from that dark place that they’re stuck in. They don’t want to be there either.

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