No parent should ever had to open the front door to answer "that" kind of calling knock.
For fifteen years I have been expecting "that" knock on my door.
Foolishly disconnecting the door chime with the hope that without it,
the call would never come.
When it did, my heart suddenly left my frozen body.
I knew, even before opening the door and looking into the eyes of the Police Officer, barely hearing him saying how sorry he was.
I saw his lips moving but I didn't want to hear.
He was talking about a 28-years-old-man, who was making everybody sorry, even this heartsick stranger in uniform
He was talking about my son.
Perhaps counting the days until retirement and the end of duties like this one.
He had seen doors opening to a sudden widening eyes, first with the innate fears from our guilty conscious, then…came disbelief veiled with pain and with sorrow, all faces abruptly gone pale, maybe like of those confronting a firing squad.
The stranger wasn’t using bullets, much more devastating than that, he was using words.
They said that, as one is dying, all your life will pass in front of your eyes, suddenly I started to se mine like I was in a small station witnessing the passing of a runaway train, that sucked the air from my lungs, it was a blurred mixture of pictures of a new born, of a toddle smiling, of kindergarten and Sunday school’s miraculous apples, the Confirmation’s moped, the teen troubles and admonitions, and begging, and fears, and sleepless nights of waits, with the end of the life dangling there, like a train’s caboose.
In the line of duty, this Police Officer perhaps had witnessed before parents dying inside, before he could utter a word.
I saw his lips moving.
The blow isn’t a physical blow but still a tremendous blow, even if you are expecting it, like a boxer, looking forward, the guard up, and then, the hit come and the surprise is there as unexpected as if you weren’t anticipating it.
You want to find excuses, explain to yourself that you are a victim and feel sorry for what’s happening to you.
You want to find something or someone to blame.
In a second’s swoosh, you had become part of statistics, of tabloids, the “celebrity of the day’s parent” and the undeserved five minutes of fame.
EXCUSES.
There are no excuses, no today, so don’t look for one, because amid all the parents of the world you belong among the unlucky ones.
The ones that didn’t heard evil, saw no evil, said no evil. A product of a “perfect” world, where tragedies were measured on long away droughts and hunger, floods, and large quantities of people in flight from another war going on somewhere.
Our life’s tragedies were constricted on finding a last minute baby-sitter; car-pool drag, delayed commuter trains too full to accommodate another traveler and the every morning traffic cork.
We had heard of Colombia drug cartels, the Golden Triangle and Afghanistan poppy farms, which sincerely, we had no idea what they were or of what the TV anchor was talking about.
The nearest our knowledge of drugs extended to, was to the occasional article referring to a dope-pusher caught in a disreputed part of the city, or a raid, whatever that is, of a crack house.
The users were pictured as derelicts with nothing whatsoever in common with our neighborhood or our way of life.
Our little girls were innocent ones, and our boys the sporty ones.
We were hiding in our own special zoo.
Being the three brass monkeys.
Parents trying not to believe, hiding with their hands the eyes that didn’t want to see, covering their ears to no hear, covering their mouths trying to believe their own unspoken words…“it will never happen to us.”
It was easier to shut the eyes and ignore it; we didn’t do “it”, so, how or why should our children been doing “it”?
Shut the eyes, ignore, and “it” will go away because it is just a teen face.
SCHOOLYARD PREDATORS.
Yes, start believing, all begins in what any parent trust is a safe heaven, school.
It was, for me anyway, living in a cocoon of parental security for a few hours a day, thinking during these blessed hours that I could go on living with my guard down, with others looking after for a while. I mean, looking out for my offspring not to be run over by a car, falling from a tree, play with matches or be on harms way by some crazy brat carrying a knife in his pocket.
But not drugs.
Drugs, were then, never a blip on our parental radar screen.
Because you see, after seeing a TV program about drugs and guns found in a school locker, I had taken my boy in the car and drove around the degradation realms of the well-known city back-streets shooting galleries, pointing at the end of humanity, not for a moment believing that we could ever belong among them.
The view wasn’t one that invited to become one of them.
It was a real shocker to him and I got a lot of hostile flack for doing it and maybe, a big maybe here, causing the child to have nightmares, yeah! right! the boy’s growing up with films like “Texas chain massacre”, “Halloween”, “Freddy Kruger” and “Friday the 13th”…and mother is worried about nightmares?
What he saw down there wasn’t a make believe film; it was News on the raw, which could happen to anybody, anywhere.
It did, everyday, just watch the News.
As I saw it, you treat the arm before the gangrene sets in the little finger, as hinted by the one armed man.
One day, at lunch, we were talking around the table about one of our neighbor’s teen kid which was caught with a pipe full of cannabis dreams once too often and, being linebacker size boy, doing a particularly violent no-no which, in reality, is no good doing it in front of the cops.
The neighborhood went into buzzing high drive of gossiping and finger pointing like “we are better than thou” kind of bitching, taking pleasure for past grievances about a dog in the flower’s bed, a ball constantly going over the fence, loud music, or a car parked a little too near somebody’s driveway.
This one was different.
This one nobody saw it coming.
Suddenly “it” wasn’t no more out there, were it couldn’t reach us, because we were the ones protected by social-well-stand-penicillin from that kind of infection.
The neighbor’s kids were going to the same school of my son, and I told my boy “if you ever take drugs you will not die because of them but because of me if you ever did that to your mother.”
I was pissed off.
It wasn’t the best argument, but it was all I had.
My son looked at me the same way a death-row man will at his executioner and it gave me heartache.
After my bombastic statement I was sure the point was made, “don’t ever start the count down to lift-off to make your old man go ballistic.”
In peace with ourselves we reverted to our lives inside the cocoon enfolding it like an impregnable shield of security.
We did it mostly by fear.
Fear can cause the parents to shut the door to the thoughts of reason and possibility, embracing tightly the belief that “it” will never happen to them, ostriches have that same kind of approach when in danger, highly recommended if one want disaster later on.
We also embrace the comfort of sending the children to the school sanctuary.
School.
Teachers and parents had not a clue to what was going on in those yards, or the streets around it.
The innocent and forbidden smoking of that first cigarette was been lashed with something else "for free". Pot wasn't so bad either, is it?
It's called "experimenting, man, we can handle it!"
At thirteen, you will believe anything; even that you can win the double dares challenges of your peers.
First, drunk with proud, to have “done” what the others didn’t dare to, being first among equals…taking more afterward because one most do it to stay ahead, to continue being the “cool” one, and on the bonus side…“that” good feeling from “it”.
DECEPTION’S LITTLE SOLDIERS
Learning gradually how to lie, to camouflage themselves into darling chameleons, they set an extra par of pink colored glasses in front of parental eyes.
Mom didn’t notice, and explaining the “smell” we fooled her saying that a couple of pals had smoked and she should not say nothing to the other Moms or it would look as if he was ratting on his friends, and yes he took a drag, sorry, it tasted like a disgusting rancid vegetable soup.
Dad haven’t got a clue, he is away around the world all the time, working his tail off and making aggressive noises like he knew something, while his wonder boy were putting one over him…every time!
We fool them all the time…we are gooooood!
At thirteen they thought they knew, at fifteen they knew without any question, after two years of learning how to fly below the radar screen, yes sir!
Then…
WHEN “ECSTASY” DOESN’T MEANT JOY
The straight-As student sliding down to Bs, and gradually the Cs and Ds were more common until the Fs went forward and wiped out any other letter.
His explanations? "Teachers don't like me", "forgot home-work", “detentions for fighting trying to defend himself”, “caught smoking in recess”, and, finally the defiant attitude: "I-am-fed-up-with-school".
Teacher’s explanations? “Too hyperactive, disturbing constant the class with shenanigans”, “hostility against authority”, “failing to carry homework”, “picking fights”, “challenging bullying older boys”, and “skulking classes more often than not.”
When small, seven or eight years old, he was a sweet boy with not propensity for hostility, a calm, loving, open to friendships, making easily new ones as we moved few times from one location to a better one, trying as a family to live where ghetto, street gangs, and trouble where found on the other side of the tracks, far, far away where our home was.
Even there was the occasionally bullying by envy, because his parents could afford a slightly better jacket, or shoes or a bike.
It’s not fun to be beaten for no reason.
We enrolled him on a two years Self Defense and Karate class.
He was a fast learner.
They teach him how to neutralize an attacker without hurting him and the most important of all the philosophy of self-discipline not to be the attacking one.
It stopped the bullying on it’s tracks, giving the boy self-confidence and improving his social skills, even, for his very young age, going to the transition from being the punching ball to protecting smaller children from being bullied.
A couple of times an older boy got a lip cracked for his troubles by mi son.
Who could blame him?
Nobody likes to have they offspring bullied, so we had complained to the school a few times when your little boy comes home with a fat lip, a shine or a tear-off on a expensive jacked.
We had a few civilized words with his Teachers, which resulted in nothing, so we moved up to the Principal.
Zilch. Nada.
When he went to the other side of the receiving end we got our ears full, they had now plenty to say.
Now they react? When somebody wouldn’t take it anymore?
Blessed the change of scenery to another city and High School.
Top middle-class environment, with few embassies’ residences, a well-kept part of town, with barbeque garden parties and full of well behaved toddlers growing up in safe kindergartens.
First year a straight A’s all around, happy to go to school, can’t wait to do so, but slacking a little, maybe because summer break?
Second year, as I mentioned before, the sliding downs to B’s and D’s and F’s.
Also that’s when our neighbor’s kid got in trouble.
What was wrong with that school?
My boy isn’t perfect, but please give a break!
We didn’t know then that things had gone horrible wrong out of hand, the teachers, exhausted of swimming against the current just gave up and went through the motions of teaching, some of them even calling in sick because they feared some students no so veiled threats.
Many parents were opposed or unwilling to participate in a parental-unified-front because “we don’t live in a police state”, “the right of privacy” or plain and simply “why should we? It’s your problem if your children have problems”.
The police said a long, long time after, that they had the school under surveillance suspecting drugs dealing going on, they were looking after the suppliers and their distributor’s network. They weren’t there to arrest minors for a “joint” possession and compromise all their “by-the-book-stakeout-shebang.”
Anyway, the school and the parents never got the information that the law was around, because it would have compromised their investigation.
At the end…nobody was arrested, arraigned, charged or prosecuted, and, the seizure of a bag containing something was dandily dodged by celebrity lawyers retained by some fat cat up and up in the system.
My wife said to go the extra mile, that the only way to beat a persisting problem was to keep persistently pounding at it.
It seemed like beating a dead horse to move.
This time I went directly to the Principal and the School Board.
I told them to explain to me how an straight-As student all of a sudden was scrapping the bottom of the barrel, after all, we knew him better that a bunch of know-it-all trying to put the blame in the child under their care.
Like politicians, they had mastered the art of talking a lot without saying anything; putting the blame on understaffing, vague direction from above, lack of support from whatever authority and the total absence of power to discipline the students that scream “abuse!” to all and anything, because some psychologist said that “harsh” words from the teacher could damage the psyche of the darlings holding a spring-knife in their little pockets, knowing from TV, that they could use it and go away with it because they were minors!
I understood their frustration but at the same time I couldn’t accept their silence when they were aware of something going on but saying that all was well and they didn’t need help from parents to run the school.
Catch 22.
We came with a compromise after some heated bad tempered outburst, sorry, some were mine; they will try to do their job better and we will certainly be on our toes to improve ours.
As you can gather now, everybody from the “they” group knew that we were an ignorant parents bunch of suckers with no idea of what was happening around us, because that famous “need to know” curse of our modern society for the protection of anonymity, civil liberties and crime investigation, slams the door firmly shut on our faces to the solution’s house.
We are set to play on an already rigged game against us.
But we went at hit, sincerely, putting all our efforts to succeed.
Suddenly, while blowing-out the candles, we got the cake to blown in our faces.
Helping with school homework, showing interest in the extra curricular activities, daily checking, looking for improvements, and on and on and on.
We felt like Sisyphus pushing the stone, uphill, on a landscape of dry sand, getting our feet deeper and deeper with every step.
We didn’t give up, kept trying, and kept pushing.
One day we realized that we were pushing nothing in front of us; our “stone” had started to go it’s own way.
Down, and fast.
We kept trying.
Grounding, canceling privileges only provoked nasty rows and no improvements.
The school peoples kept saying, “It’s not our fault!”
What’s wrong with that people?
They are incubating little monsters there!
OK, first order of the agenda: unsupervised parties are forbidden!
Unless a platoon of parents are around monitoring, and suffering ear damage by the air-attack-warning kind of noise (their music normal volume), we will have none of it, if Teachers will come to help because they know who the potentials troublemakers are…the more the merry!
Oh, we thought we showed the brats that we got some tricks left up our sleeves, didn’t we?
Enter Deception’s little Advanced Apprentices.
If parties without chaperoning are forbidden...
“Go underground!” and…
Let's have a Party!!! Party!!! Party!!!
In those parties a friendly pusher will be busy lashing-up unattended and open bottles of Coke, a glass of Pepsi or the “forbidden” can of beer to make a little more sure that today’s party goers are the fast costumers of tomorrow; giving away free samples of Ecstasy and a joint or two, with a “tiny little bite of crack" for the initiated.
That’s for the underground party.
That’s how Mike or Willy came to broke his leg when his parents thought he was “sleeping over” in the house of a friend and fell from a window when he tried to fly a little way up, flapping his arms and giggling silly until he, luckily, missed the asphalt driveway and landed on a wood bench by the flowers bed below.
Next day at school, everybody had a ball, laughing and scribbling on the plaster outrageous well wishes.
When we caught up with the scam and wake up from the pink reveries that all is well…we tended to make more laws to cope with our own naiveté.
And believe it or not, the brats are already quite a few steps ahead of everybody by collecting loopholes to accommodate to any law you dreamed of.
We firmly thought we had Control.
But the brats were who really was in charge, graduating into Deception Masters.
Like evolution, they found the ways to bypass every no-no laws and cleverly made everybody convinced that they were complying.
The cops knew better but they weren’t telling.
How do you know?
It started to happen at the parents/school reunions, proms, despite approved and chaperoned parties, so well camouflaged that parents, teachers doing the chaperoning said merrily: "we have at last everything under control".
We found ourselves on a carrousel from which we wanted to get off.
It is unbelievably how the time passes without you noticing it.
Yesterday and the day before were two, three, ten years ago, whatever happened?
One morning, taking an extra five minutes by your breakfast coffee you glanced at the offspring of yours…
…suddenly your child looks "old", and gradually, helpless, with shifting eyes, searching for something that only these eyes can see, showing the hopelessness of not knowing what tomorrow would bring anything and don’t caring if it doesn’t. It would be like seeing someone totally unknown to you, an estranger, desperately buying a ticked made of misery for a first-class trip to hell.
You realized that very morning, you had an enemy supposedly in the front of you, but it was not, it was somewhere else.
No winning or maintaining the foes at bay; all the time, enraged, the fist of your were punching the air.
After all you did, after all the warnings…
How that could happen to you?
PANIC!
Like falling from a skyscraper wishing to have a parachute.
That asphalt down below is going to kiss your face very hard.
It is too late?
Information, must have information.
Damn it! It’s scarce!
Internet, check for information there, now!!!
Information? A lot of it, which is which?
What concerned me?
What should I do?
Who I could, must talk to?
When I need help, who I ask?
Not my neighbors, or my family (embarrassment and fear).
"We did not know that your child was a...”
"Unfit father!”
"Unfit mother!"
"Unfit parents!!!”
“Child abuse!”
Get rubber-stamped and the child taken away.
Fear with shame and shame with fears.
Fear of the consequences when doing something.
Fear of the consequences when doing nothing.
Shame to say anything, to anybody.
Ask the police for guidance about some reputable and forcible drugs rehab institution and get a contemptuous “would you do that to your son?”
Lost in the wilderness of a unknown world to you, without a chart and compass, guessing all the time if you should do this or better if you should do that, after all, your childhood had not all of today’s foreign elements which you certainly don’t have a chance today to recognize as a menace.
The biggest sins of your childhood was stealing apples from a neighbor orchard of joyriding a “borrowed” bike and getting a nosebleed for it.
Heavy roller skates, wooden yo-yo on a string and kites.
Breaking with slingshots the small window glasses of the long abandoned fabric.
Oh, and a time of two of summer truancy when the gang went for a swimming instead of school.
The forbidden first cigarette at twelve years old had came from stealing one of your father’s, not from a friendly pusher.
By the way, the friendly pusher poisoning your child can be living two doors down from yours.
He/she doesn’t need to look at all Hollywood sinister.
IGNORING THE ALARM SIGNALS
Teacher’s notes started to accumulate like the fallen leaves of autumn about increasingly disruptive behavior, unwarranted hostility, missing classes, tardiness and truancy.
At home, from sweet behavior and polite obedience to explosive activity, followed by sullenness or apathy.
Curfew disregard by sneaking out, sometimes being plain hostile.
My father would have warmed up my hide with his belt if I had tried to pull one of those fast ones; if you do it today it’s called battery.
They know it, they know you know it and your belt stays put.
The child was converted in a sheet of sand paper wearing down the family fabric with the dedication of a self-destructing device.
When you are in the path of a runaway train and can’t get out of its way, instinctively you close your eyes and with fatalism think “what’s going to happen is going to happen” and fight no more the inevitable. You are not Mike Tyson; you can’t punch your way out.
The event that punched your lights out…was the shoplifting at the Supermarket.
Where, ashamed, paid for the items and got into a hooted argument, with some of my neighbors watching, about the child's punishment and how to bring up other’s children without having one first.
To make things worse, I told my son what a big embarrassment he caused me, what I felt, how ungrateful he was for all the things I was doing for him and how uninterested I was if "it", the shoplifting, was just a school gang initiation ritual.
“Like the one you had Dad!” but he didn’t grasped that our “initiation” wasn’t pilfering others property, mainly it involved a living frog in a Teacher’s purse.
I wasn't thinking about him, I was too busy building up my rage.
Like Sisyphus you get tired of climbing the sand dune. Pushing.
When at home, yes, I oversaw truancy, tardiness, and spurned curfews, unloading the burden on the shoulders of my wife.
She was getting tired too, where mothers don’t get tired.
He was transforming himself into a “something” that only a mother can love, and with time…not even that.
Was my job so demanding traveling all over the world (supposedly to earn my bread) that I couldn't see the impeding disaster, or was I burying my head in the sand, thinking that on my return all the problems would be gone?
Only a teenager’s phase?
Regrettably I left my wife alone with the problems, I didn’t want to seriously believe we had one.
Why no one approached us with a real warning, advice?
Where were all the "experts" that could guide dumb parents throughout the jungle of emotional and human degradation?
TROUBLE
I knew we were really in trouble when the child, from being a happy camper, my buddy, the friendly little person, became moody and exploded in bouts of activity (withdrawal) followed by apathy or too normal behavior (got a "fix").
A supposedly Good Samaritan told me that all teens go through a phase, that's all.
I wanted to believe it.
I needed to believe it.
He was the son of two highly trained professionals, with the history of both families not showing remotely any record of a over the wall grand uncle devoted to the bottle or a tip-tip-grand mother popping pills for the fun of it, we couldn’t understand what was the cause of our troubles.
Where the faulty genes were coming from?
Our child erroneously been switched by a stressed nurse at birth?
Then again, we hadn’t spoiled him rotten, or showering him with everything he pointed at.
Then, maybe he felt deprived, his life lacking fun, pushing him to go out and “take the fun” somewhere else.
We were trying to go up the creek without a paddle, in a canoe with a big hole in the bottom.
Feeling a hopeless resignation from the unstoppable sinking.
We were in trouble, but we didn’t know how big the trouble was.
A LIE IS A LIE IS A LIE
I wanted to believe in the honesty of my son, because he was raised to honor that. I felt guilt when I confronted him with my suspicions.
"Tell me," I said, "are you taking drugs?"
"No, honest to God, I never touched the stuff and I never will".
He answered looking right into my eyes.
I saw the face of a church-going child with innocent unblinking eyes telling me what I desperately wanted to believe, for he couldn't be lying. Could he?
Yes he took a drag or two from a cigarette, just once! And he didn't like it because it made him sick (make an admission and get dad hoodwinked, after all Dad smokes and he can’t smell a rat because of it).
Mom is another matter; she doesn’t smoke and looks at me with baleful suspicious eyes from time to time, so I need to be very careful there.
Suspicions?
What should I have done instead of be fooled by unblinking innocent eyes?
Or should I never asked the child about it when the first suspicion punched my guts, dragging him to my physician for a urine and blood analysis? Telling my son right away that there will be more to come in the future every time we get the “drug alert” in our guts.
I should have done that, I should have dragged him, kicking and spitting, and in the end, better to be sorry and apologize if I was wrong. Could it have been considered child abuse?
Kept on doing it so often that he could not take a chance of being found out and tasted my belt, laws or no laws.
Apologize? Why apologize for trying to keep the child alive?
Who apologize to us for having tied our hands on our backs, denying help by forsaking their duties?
I should have let my son know! about the real life game of dare and consequences and let him hate me for a while.
Then again, sorry…
This is today, after the fact, when we know better after excruciatingly learned all the tricks, all the lies, and our consequences.
An excuse?
A gamble?
No, no way, you don’t gamble with your children.
Honest mistake?
No again, we didn’t know better to make one.
We didn’t know the truth.
TRUTH AND LIES, A GAME OF CONSEQUENCES
I didn't know that nobody lies with more credibility than a drug addict.
One day we woke up to the reality of having under our roof an addicted seventeen-years-old-junkie-apprentice, a nightmare taking over my house, with painkillers and sleeping pills disappearing faster than the ailments.
The "Keep out of children’s reach" applied no more, because I didn't have a child anymore, he graduated into a cunning, street-smart, unrepentant, unloving entity whose only concern was "where's my next fix coming from?”
We couldn’t hide anything from "it"!
After an alarmed conference with his mother I turned over real good his room sending his “privacy” to take a hike.
I looked into the room with the eyes of somebody trying to hide anything as we did with our medicines.
In a mattress corner was a tiny little cut, inside I found two short mini pipes with an odor, which wasn’t from tobacco.
Wanting to be absolutely sure I went again to my local police precinct, asking, no demanding or anything, if they could tell me what was the residuals inside the pipes I found on my son’s bedroom.
I got another contemptuous “Would you do that to your son?” after explaining that dealing, buying, or taking illegal substances gets automatically jail time.
We got frustrated?
We felt hopelessness?
Damn right!
I went back home feeling like putting the entire world on fire, and proceeded to give a real turn over to my son’s room.
Taped under the bottom of one of the desk drawers and on the back wood plate of a bookshelf I found seven small packets not big than a dime, which I took to a police friend.
After checking one of the packages content in a glass vial with some liquid in it, he shook his head like something was bad, very bad.
He took me out of his office and into the rest room where he flushed the packages down the toilette, telling me that if he knew about them my son was in trouble, because it was some high grade up and up dope, very expensive and he thought that jail wasn’t the answer, there was more than less of the stuff.
He confided to me that he was taking his family out of the city trying to protect his sons; he thought that he was doing me a favor.
He didn’t.
The inspection of the room also produced some paraphernalia, which could or couldn’t be used for the use of pot; grass, cannabis or you name it.
Now I was not only getting mad, I was graduating to be a paranoid father ready to start kicking for answers, really frustrated with the lack of control and very sad with the fact of what it was doing to the mother.
Suddenly we found ourselves nowhere to turn.
TRUTH
I remember the first knock in the door, when my son became the thief that brought the police into my house with a search warrant humiliation in the twilight of one early morning, like a nightmare out of any Gestapo midnight raid.
We, that never had a parking ticked had the dubious honor of been under the spotlight of perhaps “hiding and abetting” a criminal.
What happened?
Angry I made very clear that I wanted everything put back in its place or else, realizing that if I made the call to shake up the storm- troupers could make things worse.
By the state of disorder of drawers, furniture, boxes, mattresses and everything else, I started to understand the feelings of the victims of a twister.
So, the pride was swallow and at the end I didn’t get a fat good apology for finding nothing.
They wanted to know were my son was but were not informing us what was all about by the storm-troops, we were the parents of a son with many names, drug abuser, addicted, hophead, junkie, horse-pilot, coke-blower or ecstasy-surfer.
They couldn’t understand why we had no control over him disappearing like that, going to high school in the morning and no returning for several days.
We patiently explained to them that it was against the law to forcefully chain him fast to an iron bolt anchored in the wall so he could not sneak out.
That I was away most of the time and my wife possible couldn’t hope to restrain a six foot five two hundred pounds training obsessed aggressive body builder.
He just take off when he pleases, and our house remains open, maybe, just maybe, in the remote chance that family will weigh more than the craving.
We were not ready to give up, not yet.
We said that the boy was AWOL for the last two days.
They didn’t believe it.
Tough!
JUSTICE, THE BLINDFOLDED LADY
There was so much snow on the side of the mountain that the avalanche… inevitable must come.
The summons to Juvenile Court was, in a way, the family name’s autopsy.
My son heard me, in a rage, screaming loud enough to bring down the Jericho walls all over again about the waste of life he was and how he could crawl down under the stone he had came out from.
I wasn’t trying to shake him into any awakening; I was mad, really mad without giving a thought to the amplified echoes in the cavernous vaults of Justice.
IN THE HALLS OF THE GOLDEN DRAGON
If anything, the encounter with the blindfolded lady system only encouraged him to go missing longer and be found only because of a first overdose.
The junkie-apprentices, I was to know later, always do.
“I felt sorry for myself but I didn't want that to happen, just happened” he said.
The junkies don't do it (overdosing) out of guilt or shame. They couldn't care less about jail or judges. They do it out of self-pity, because feeling sorry for themselves is one of the perks of being a junkie.
Another perk is to be able to stir themselves into rages on clue.
My son's was hearing the word "no" as in "no, you can't" or "no, you don't".
One afternoon, when dropping by the house and getting one “no” for whatever reason from his mother, he really lost it and in an explosion of rage he attempted to strangle her. He was so doped-up that she managed to fight him away.
The unspeakable act was the peak. From there, it was all the way down, fast.
I was told about it long after the fact, luckily for both of us, or I would have been looking for him with a heart devoid of love.
The GOLDEN DRAGON isn’t a cute furry homely companion to cuddle in bed with,
It causes overdose (O.D.), the kind you read in the papers about.
The kind that brings “the” knock on many doors.
One evening he was at my door feeling sick and looking worse. Trembling uncontrollably, freezing despite a scorching summer, and with pains I took were from withdrawal. He has barely the strength to collapse in his bed that had been not sleep-in in weeks. By midnight he was vomiting blood, and I drove him to the nearest hospital E.R.
He was down with Hepatitis-C, an incurable infection of the liver, most probably caused by the sharing of infected needles.
His body started to fail.
Surprisingly, against all doctor's prognosis, he recovered and I thought “that was it” He had nearly lost his life and now was the time when anybody jumping out from a six foot under address will have the sense to kick the monkey from his back. The scare was so big that he even agreed to a twelve-week's drug-habit treatment, he was stupid for use the stuff but he was smart enough not to be suicidal.
We visited him regularly, we couldn’t see he was a growing up man, he was after all the little boy that I had hoped to play catch ball with, but I came second.
At last, after all the times trying to convince the runaway, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and dismissed the cynical thought, which said that if I saw light at the end of the tunnel it was because I was going in the wrong direction.
How long was Adam in Paradise?
Despite doctors, security windows, walls and staff's watching eyes, he disappeared before the end of the fourth week.
His White Dragon was now a rat eating away from the inside.
First to go was the heart, and with it, we didn't expect love from our child anymore.
Second was the lost of the instinct of self-preservation.
Like he didn't care about pain, or death, or danger. It was like a doll of flesh filled with nightmares made of white powder.
A drug addict will never kick the habit by been forced into treatment. Going voluntarily doesn't guarantee success either.
He knew better than anybody about the gut-wrenching pains when, curled on the floor and screaming out of his mind...that he was ready to do anything for a little bit of something.
"One more time!...the last time!!...promise!!!"
Looking down, with tears burning in my eyes I felt utterly powerless.
Twenty-one candles in the birthday cake mean that parental jurisdiction is gone even if the unreciprocated parental love is still there.
Parents cry.
How much is too much?
Wandering around places than even the police try to avoid searching for my missing child.
A missing junkie is not the same as a missing person, so, after 48 hour he will never be a missing one, why? because he's a junkie.
No fair?...cry a little more.
When I was frantically searching for him, he was searching for a way to pay for the next fix.
"Habit" means you need money.
The easiest way to get it? Steal from everywhere and everybody. The Grandpa's gold watch which I never used?...gone, the newborn's silver spoon with the gold monogram?...gone,...mother’s four generations gold ring?…gone, the five dollar silver bill from 1933?…gone, if not nailed down…gone.
I was to learn that burglarizing my house was part in the great scheme of his life. That if a junkie has no money and his credit is reaching the right deeps with the friendly pusher, he can make all go away, get a clean slate when desperate enough or threatened with bodily harm by giving the "info" about when and how
of friends, family and neighbor’s houses.
I thought it was all far-fetched...it wasn't.
With time came experience, too late to help. Wiser after the fact.
We graduated into the ranks of "parents with knowledge".
We came to know that, in the eyes of the pushers, girls are better costumers because they can make money easier than boys.
Boys come into all kind of troubles and are a nickel and dime trade.
Girls, on the other hand, can support a five-hundred-dollar-a-day habit by selling their bodies. If they are very pretty they can make even more.
An emaciated six-foot-five boy is not in great demand.
If my son was selling…nobody was buying.
So we came to the next step: jail time.
When that happened I nearly cried for small mercies.
Optimistically believing that it was the best thing that could happen to him.
He was going to kick the habit the hard way: cold turkey, right?,...wrong!
Jail was like letting loose an unsupervised child in a candy store.
I could not understand that after the humiliating person-search at every visit and all the control in the world, how it was possible that in prison you can obtain more drugs than on the street? Nobody was interested in the welfare of my son, not even the prison warden, everybody just going with the motions because it was written in this or that book, no more, no less...and at six o'clock my shift ends
and I go home to supper.
At 23, you are a man. Purchased misery?...pay here for it!
IN THE BEGINNING…
I let myself be convinced that "it" will never happen to me.
But by then, among the toys of my son was a furry, cute, homely White Dragon.
I couldn't keep it from his arms reach, until a fateful night of massive overdose.
"It will never happen to us" should be written in the walls of every E.R. room.
Or in the walls of any insane ward where they keep all the children that didn't make it.
Where they kept a son that I knew so well but that didn't recognized me, with constantly wandering eyes searching after his cuddling Golden Dragon.
I felt going insane myself, with thoughts, with sleepless nights, with nightmares when asleep and when awake.
I perhaps failed as a parent and was a little too arrogant thinking that I could fix alone by superstitiously believing that all was to be well tomorrow if I just crossed my fingers, closed my eyes and wished very hard.
It didn’t work, it never does.
Once you are falling, all the wishes in the world for a parachute will not help.
The impact that drug abuse by one of its member has in the family core, is a devastating one, taking away from everybody the sense of security and warm.
It forced me to witness day-by-day the decaying life of a human being, which physically resembled his father...as the only common feature.
The most terrible feelings of all is the one after going back to the old pictures of that heart charmer, polite almost to a fault little boy and compare it with the present gaunt and dark wreak.
IN THE HALLS OF FEAR
Fear is the strongest emotion dominating the life of parents trying to cope with parental chores in a world that offers not help or guidelines.
In the parent’s curriculum vitae does not exist a single item, which answers any question about their competence to tackle.
Fears of an environment out of their control.
Fear of not being able to protect, rear and guide their children.
Fear of "that" world outside, at if failing, in such a world, somebody will come and find them unfit as parents.
And the greatest of all fears, the one generated by the certainty that among other things, many a White Dragon are waiting to claim their unaware child.
Parents shouldn't be alone in their frantic search, that they could rely on parents who were "there" before and can contribute to put an end to the beginning. The police can't help every time, because if using drugs is a crime, the perpetrator and the victim are one and the same person.
I wish that parents, without feeling ashamed, could had found in their hearts to come forward and said aloud what went wrong, or write about the experience so the next parents could have a clue on how to rescue their children.
But we are afraid of coming forward and give a face to the tortured parents, we lost the face of the children and we don’t want to lose our own.
In the meantime a couple of parents are trying to save theirs, alone, searching with a broken heart.
I remember how I felt when there was nobody helping to save mine.
THE “RECREATIONAL” STUFF OF “CHOICE”
"Crack", doesn't mean the space between the floorboards anymore, as "horse" doesn't means a pony.
After a while, learned a language that one could well live without.
"Ecstasy" is not a cool trance into Nirvana’s world, but a little pill that put multicolored monsters flying around causing delirium and death.
Dad, the fun spoiler of "mild drugs for private recreation that make you to scream funny screams of pleasure”
I dreaded the call, of a police officer or the church minister, because I knew that when they come I would be left empty and screaming on my own.
THE GOLDEN DRAGON
Drugs: a ticked made of misery for a First Class trip to Hell.
We weren't travelers, but were paying for that ticket too.
When everything seemed lost, our only hope was keep-on-fighting and wait for a miracle.
And keep on waiting.
Until late one evening…
…when "that" dreaded knock rattled the door. After so many knocks during the years, I don't know why I knew, but it froze my heart.
Opening the door I saw a police officer, a troubled one, asking if I was the father of...
Maybe he was thinking about his own children, hoping he'd never have to answer this kind of call.
He was saying that few hours earlier a fireball caught my son...
chemical explosion...badly burned...intensive care...but...
I saw his lips moving but wasn't listening anymore, most of the words were lost, life, life? it passed in front of my eyes in a blur of distorted images.
I saw his lips moving.
I forced myself to try to hear.
At the end I barely heard him whisper, "I'm so sorry..."
Everybody says they are sorry. Maybe, you story will wake up
some. I'm afraid for our youth. They want so much and don't want
to work for it. They want instant gratification. Where do they
begin to fall? When they are toddlers and we stick a pacifier in their mouths rather than hold them? Sad. I've lived too much sad myself.
Two years after you wrote this and the menace has gotten worse -
the sources have diversified and nobody's really "safe" from this drug problem anymore. It has become an acceptable part of society, and the world. Why? Because it is good business! This is where the big bucks come from! Drug lords in my country get rich quick and sell internationally they can even "buy" the military, the interpol, and all other blockages that can be blinded by money. Airports? No problem, they swallow the drugs in plastic balloons and transport as many as they can have in their intestines. The saddest part is when the addict gets high and violent he turns on innocent victims (sometimes his own family) and massacres them in a fit of frenzy.
We have had countless drug related crimes all over the world - it is a wonder we can still go out at night!
Hi WE, A parent dies many deaths that noone notices.... ever! I have to walk up to the plate and claim my son, too, walked into that life. He was on his deathbed, after all the years his dad refused to let him communicate with me, when he came to me. His recovery was worse than hell, but he did it. WE, you are more than a passionate man... you are a man that lives and breathes on the pulse of the soul. You are Chief!
the preverbial 2x4 to the head for parents. Powerful. Thank you for sharing. Addiction within a family is horrific enough, but when a child "dates" an addict, oh...what can I say, the pain is no less. They inturn make excuses for their addict and defend them to no end. The addict's lies become their lies, imposing their problems onto the one's unfortunate enough to fall for their sob story. They feel like they can be the one to save the addict and the addict seduces them into believing they can. Only to drag them threw the gutter along side them. i wish you peace, in any way it may come to you.
Sandra:)
George this is powerful emotional write
My prayer for healing goes out to you.
I wish I knew some special words or magic that
Could help you heal and ease the pain in your heart
I know there’s no such word or magic that can help heal
the deep wound in your heart drugs are a weapon of destruction
I agreed with Kimmy
Many times we just closed are eyes wishing and hoping
That it will all go away
This must have torn your heart apart all over again
To write this very deep write!
Thank you for sharing these incredible and touching pieces
Again George God Bless you and heal your wounded heart!
Love Peace and Joy and Hugsss to help eased your pain
Your friend always...Yolie
Reviewed by Flying Fox Ted L Glines
8/1/2007
I know that "fireball explosion," Georg - another meth lab blows sky high. Thanks to our "freedom of speech" protections, there are crude directions for making methamphetamine in countless magazines and books, and on Websites everywhere. And it is a "little golden dragon" which kills those who cuddle it. You have really told the whole story here, Georg, and maybe it will cause some parents to get their dratted fool heads out of the sand. Well done!
My gosh Georg ... what a gripping write. My wife and me almost destroyed our young lives with drugs. It was only Gods grace and intervention, through other caring individuals, that got us on the path again.
Our beautiful daughter Crista almost ruined her life on drugs and trafficking and spent time in jail because of her indiscretions. The experience has turned her life around though.
You are a man who has suffered in many ways Georg; there always seems a thread that runs through your work that attests to that fact. Thankyou for being the man you are and sharing with your readers these incredible and touching stories.
The true scenario of many American families including my own...
Instead of closing our eyes, instead of not seeking help and being willing to share our guilt or concerns or worries, we kept it inside...hoping and praying it will all "go away"
God helps those that help themselves!
We must be truthful to what’s before us, have the courage and stamina to protect and fight any battle against all evils swilling our world around us...
My brother is somewhere out there, either in a jail or some crack house, or maybe stealing food or fighting for his life...or already lost his life???
We all moved away from anywhere he was familiar, to prevent our homes from being burglarized and our lives being turned upside down...
My brother has spent more time in jail than out...so I believe he is what they call, "institutionalized" "They" say, he can't succeed at this point, but I believe, deep in my heart, that there is hope for anyone...!!!
Some say that’s the dreamer in me...but I think it’s the "faith" in me...
Georg~ your story hits even closer now, as I now spend, night after night, wondering... are MY children safe? I have kept my eyes opened, I have kept the line of communication opened, I thought I knew my crosses, but with the recent suicide attempt of my oldest daughter last Friday, and even hearing the doctors say it was probably her reaction to a recent drug change, that caused her to cross that line...a mother wonders...
Why? ...because this mother has seen the so called, tendencies WAY before this and thought, maybe... it would just "go away".
I am not convinced yet, why she crossed that line and to see her on a ventilator, not breathing on her own...seeing flashes of her whole life and the future of her five beautiful girls before me, praying...crying...feeling helpless and devastated... I wonder how my life would have changed had she not pulled through???
I must somehow find a way to believe the truth, once I find the truth???
Your story was expressed with deep heartfelt emotion...and I must share this with her...
God Bless You Georg~ You might not see it, after all your tradgedies, but I do believe he has...you have a gift to share and what we do here on earth will be awarded, tenfold, there, in heaven...
Your story helped me today~
Love and Peace~
Kimmy~
Reviewed by Missy Cross
8/1/2007
Georg - Thank you for this... My sister has becoem an addict, and it's tearing my family apart one thread at a time, and slowly stealing my parents' souls. With your words I know, at least, that we are not alone. No one could have captured the struggle and the devastation more accurately, more eloquently, or more compellingly than you have here.
"The child was converted in a sheet of sand paper wearing down the family fabric..."
"Nobody lies with more credibility than a drug addict..."
"In the line of duty, this Police Officer perhaps had witnessed before parents dying inside, before he could utter a word...."
These passages, in particular, really hit at me with the despair of what you have been through.
It's impossible to understand the pain and suffering an addict creates until you're in it. And nothing is more hopeless. But I hope it helps you in some small way to know that your words and your story are a powerful force for good for fellow travellers carrying a similar burden.
OhMyGod~ I could feel your pain, confusion, worry, dismay and Troubled loving spirit Georg! My heart goes out to you!
STay STrong!
I feel for you and your family!
Healings are NOW taking place, feel them appear within!
Remember this "G"- Tough LOve, is REAL and knew your love for him and concern! A father's deep abiding love!
YOu have the love of your caring and honest friends!
WArm hugs and Much love, Warrior Purple Lady Sheeeoox
STay Positive! WE must KEEP growing and learning and still believing!
STay SAFE!
Namaste!
Reviewed by ~ Holly Harbridge
7/31/2007
Dearest Georg, as you told this true story it broke my heart. I am deeply saddened for you and your family. I am so sorry my friend. Love Holly
Reviewed by LadyJtalks LadyJzTalkZone
7/31/2007
I hope that the part of you that dies after something like this is the part of you that you blame for not being able to save him for the choice to use drugs has nothing to do with you and his mother and everything to do with him. I wish you peace. Lady J
Georg, my condolences seems like such an inadequate phrase when attempting to console ones loss. "Namaska, the God in me salutes and honors the God in you." as you continue to share your gifts of compassion and insight. PEACE. <Mikii>
quite a gripping detailed heart pouring of life's drama, having grown up in Chicago i have deep memories of the herion addicts I personally knew...I'm so sorry, I can feel your agony and pain...hugs of compassion to you
Personally I disagree with Mr. Ed on this one...i raised my own to see what was right in the world and always kept my focus on them making the perfect safe choices for their lives, i was labeled, cast out and vented upon by my family for those beliefs, however none of my children have ever fallen prey to this darker world, you've described here...is there a right answer? I believe it is a personal choice and expected experience we receive in order to grow our souls....no one really knows...but i find it easier to live my life that way...again...my deepest sympathy for this tradegy...tell yourself...everything is...the way it is meant to be
Parents trying not to believe, hiding with their hands the eyes that didn’t want to see, covering their ears to no hear, covering their mouths trying to believe their own unspoken words…“it will never happen to us.”
So painfully sad, Georg, and I am so terribly sorry for you and your family.
I wish I had soothing words of a healing kind, but I know after such sufferage there are no such words that can help stich such a wound.
Why children take to the road of rebelion still has most shrinks scratching their heads while they accept obscene reward. A guilt ridden gut goes without saying, it's a parent's aceptance of responsibility for the good and the bad; the evil twin of unconditional love. Your son's failure can only be attributed to what we accept as accomplishment and success in the minds of our social peers. It's true he didn't live up to standards imposed, and it's also true that the substance that brought temporary amnesia from our high pressure world became a catalyst for chaos. yet at the same time it brought him joy; small consolation for so great a loss!
We often cast judgment harshly with well defined principal. Shall we incarcerate the masses who harp hippocracy. Sex, drugs and rock & roll are as much a part of our society as poetry and politics; when and if we find joy in any pursuit we are following are heart's desire, which has no encoded book of law aside from what God wanted there no matter how it fits in with contemporary idealism's.
This saga openned my heart, so I am compelled to comment herein; you are a very loving person Georg, but emotions can turn into poison if not headed off at the pass and redirected. Can you find it in your heart to forgive him, can you forgive yourself for labeling and judging him infearior! "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Open your heart to him again and let the love wash away all anger, fear and missunderstanding, for in the end love is all there is, no matter how we mutate or minipulate it.
My deepest condolences.
J.C.
A poignant story about letting go of a narcissist in your life. Have you ever been attacked FULL force by a narcissist? It's the closest thing to being stabbed over and over in the back.
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