hit a ‘bottom’ that wasn’t dead. It is love that brought me here to you now.” Joey doesn’t know I am here. He doesn’t move.
Never could I have imagined an illness so cruel. With its insidious ways and nasty grin, addiction not only snuffed out my child’s emerging light; it broke bonds and hearts and all the rules. Addiction is the destroyer of everything.
The intensive care unit nurse asks me to leave the room. She needs to do something with the tube that sucks black stuff from somewhere deep inside Joey.
Buttoning my sweater against the surprise chill of the night air, I step outside the hospital lobby. A few steps away from the door, I sit down on a bench in the shadows. My mind rummages through Joey’s life for explanations.
Why is my son, at this moment, breathing only because of some machine he’s connected to? Why did he slug down so much alcohol that he may never again open his eyes?
Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I see a life full of bedtime stories and family dinners, camping and fishing trips, togetherness and great opportunities. Sure, there were bumps in the road and roads not taken, but there were no ugly ogres or catastrophic events along Joey’s way. Everything was so right before it went so wrong. So full and happy and promising before the destroyer of lives slithered in. There’s no reason for this tragedy. There’s nothing for me to grab onto, dammit. There’s nowhere for me to put the blame.
I do see a long string of missed clues, however. Whatever was happening—whatever was brewing, growing, looming—as Joey’s parents, Joe and I didn’t notice, even though it happened right before our eyes and under our noses. Sort of like not noticing a child’s growth spurt until many inches later. Or like not noticing the chill of the surf on your toes after a long afternoon’s tumble of waves.
The pain of Joey’s addiction has taken a toll on all of us: his father Joe, his brother Rick, and me over the past several years—as a family, as a married couple, and as individuals. We are like the three blind men in the fable, trying to identify the elephant by groping our way along the trunk, the tail, the leg. Each of us feeling the truth of our own experience. We rarely agree on just how okay, honest, or high Joey is at any given time, giving rise to conflict among us. Oh, the toxic corrosion of addiction.
More often than not, Joey is that elephant, and he’s in our living room. Joe keeps reality at bay with loud laughs and big dreams and by running long races. Rick, after so many years of so little brotherhood, can pretend he’s an only child to escape the drama of overdoses, arrests, and chaos. And I disturb everyone’s peace by talking about everything until it hurts all of us with every breath. So I don’t dredge everything up anymore. At least not as much.
There is healing power in putting ink to paper. It draws so much out of my mind besides words. Sleepless nights, spent roaming a dark house, are far fewer now that my thoughts, feelings, and fears are gathered into a notebook. I’ve finally found a way to let go of some pain—and sometimes to fuel it. A vent for the steam of my worries. I write as a way to piece together the tragedy in my family, the arrival of the future often helping me make sense of the past. And I write to remember Joey, the Joey I knew before the addict took his place. I gently fondle old memories—the fragile snowflakes of time—and put them in the safe and everlasting place of words, not to be altered or forgotten in the ravages of this ongoing storm.
I’ve heard it said that if you shake any family tree, an addict will fall out, and sadly I’ve discovered this to be true. More families are dealing with the addiction of a loved one than I ever would have guessed. The tragedy unraveling those families is similar in its destruction—different only in the details—and too often it is kept secret.
When addiction grabs a child, it chokes a parent. I know the life-draining squeeze of its grip. I’ve never felt so incapable and helpless, so sad, so lonely. And so afraid. My child has been stolen from me—stolen from himself—and I mourn Joey’s loss and suffering from a very lonely place. There is no broad community empathy or support for the families of addicts. There is no rallying cry of solidarity, no pretty ribbon brigade, and none of the comfort that so often gets baked into meat loaves and muffins. Instead there are closed doors and mouths and minds and hearts.
I want addiction to be understood, not misrepresented, misjudged, and mishandled. Not hushed up or hidden away. Nasty things grow most freely in dark corners; the scourge of addiction needs to be dragged out into the light.
Addiction pummeled my family. Beating it back has been one long, hard fight. These mother’s hands of mine, these nubby, bloodied claws, have seen battle—the battle between Hanging On and Letting Go; the battle between Barely Hanging On and Hanging in There; the battle to Survive the Unexpected; and the battle Just to Survive. Battered and bruised I may be, but I’m stronger and wiser. I finally understand there’s nothing more I can do to help my son other than support him in a quest to help himself. Still, I carry around the very maternal and human need to do something. And I need to do something with this need to do something.
So, I share my story. One mother’s story of love and loss and learning. And surviving my son’s addiction while coming to terms with the fact that he may not.
Written from the place where I live, the place where love and addiction meet.
This is The Joey Song.
I would get to give and take and know a love bigger than the moon, but when the time came, I would need to love my sons enough to let them go, without hesitation. They would need to know I believed they could fly.
The mystic’s crinkled old hands sweep my tarot card reading off the table and onto the scraggly patch of New Delhi lawn at my feet. Bangles jangling and tongue clacking, she leans forward, staring at me, I suppose, but her eyes are just shadows behind her beaded red veil. Hindi words snake out from beneath the gossamer folds and across the little hairs on the back of my neck. I don’t understand what she’s hissing at me, but she’s made her point: Whatever she saw in the cards isn’t good.
Slightly miffed, I turn my back on the ancient party-pooper; doesn’t she know the fortune-telling tents have been pitched here for pure entertainment? This, most certainly, is not entertaining. Wrapped and rustling in a bolt of shimmering lime-green silk, I sashay back to the gala event where dignitaries, diplomats, and expats gather. Lifting the hem of my sari, teetering a bit on bejeweled heels that sink into the spongy grass, I dismiss the ominous scattering of cards with a flick and a twirl.
The sultry night air is swirled with melodic tendrils of sitar and flute. Gently swaying to the exotic music, I lean into Joe, sipping wine and tasting curried morsels offered by turbaned waiters. The starlight, lanterns, and ethnic finery outshine for a moment the garbage-picking poverty right outside the iron gates. Sighing, I delight in the fancifulness of the evening—its costumes, carpets of marigold petals, and aromatic clouds of frangipani. A Bollywood-style finale to our happy first year in India.
Slipping away before the party is over, just before the moon glides into tomorrow, Joe and I stroll the campus of the American Embassy School, the same grounds where during the week our boys huddle with friends between classes. Joey is finishing up eleventh grade and Rick is finishing eighth. Meandering arm-in-arm between flowering trees and down paved steps, as we approach the stone perimeter the revelry fades into the night. Once outside the sandbagged, armed-guard entry, Joe and I dart between rickshaws, honking cars, and cows—New Delhi is wide-awake even at this late hour—to our house just across the street. Giggling, we toss pebbles through the massive gate at the end of our driveway,