Another Needless Opioid Death
(This was written the day after this person’s death whose funeral was today, 2nd June 2018)
Before you feel sorry for me after telling this story, I ask that you reserve that for my children, whose bond to their first cousin was much more profound than I ever had. My memories of their cousin are derived from the combinations of the day he was born; the day I found him climbing on the outside of balcony three stories up with no net below; and the day I found him hanging precariously from the center of a ceiling fan laughing as he swung around in a circle. These events all occurred before he was six years old. I viewed him as a reckless child. He likely thought himself an explorer.
Every year on Easter, the cousins took a picture sitting, or standing, on the front steps of their grandparents home. I was looking at one of these pictures last night seeing him standing in the back row, one of 14 kids all bunched together in a 7 year age gap born to four different parents. Every Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas the cousins came together. There are countless other times when they all crossed paths. My point here is to illustrate that this group was very familiar with one another and to someone like me, who had 2 cousins, one of which died in her early twenties in a car accident, I always thought this was extraordinary for my kids.
The cousin of which I speak, filled the age gap between my son and daughter. It wasn’t so much that they were friends, but they were family who lived close and visited often.
Back to reckless behavior edition 2.
When this cousin was 16, he emptied his bank account and somehow convinced an adult to sell him his BMW 320i. The adult took the money, never asked about insurance or driver’s license and the cousin and his friend drove the car away. Where I live there is a road which is as straight as an arrow and cuts through the county from where I live to a place called Ellicott City where the road ends in a perfect cloverleaf onto a local road. The cousin had the newly purchased, but used, BWM 320i up to about 130 mph as they approached that cloverleaf and from the momentary raceway. The car barrel-rolled 4 times ejecting the passenger out his window and the cousin, who wore his seatbelt, survived, but spent the next 9 months recovering.
This cousin was a hard working kid in his own right but he came from an overachieving family with a Ph.D. father, a mother with an MS and a sister with her own Ph.D.. If I hadn’t been around when he was born I would say that he was delivered, by accident, to the wrong family. His entire life was marked by doing the opposite of what was expected of him. His parents loved him mightily nonetheless.
The last I heard about him he had fathered a child at 19 years old. I looked on his Facebook page last night and saw pictures of that boy who is now 4 years old on the shoulders of his grandfather and also being held by his grandmother. The cousin is in the background smiling, seemingly at peace with his life, his child and his parents.
Yesterday I received a phone call and I could tell that something was wrong. I thought that my children’s maternal grandfather had died. I was told no! I then said the name of the cousin and the answer was yes. I wish I could say I was surprised. I wish he could have find some alternative route in life which had not been so reckless. I wish that the love of his child had been so overwhelming to him leading him make a different choice yesterday. Instead, my children’s cousin, one they have always known, been around so much, was found dead, all alone, another opioid death. He will be 1 out of 128 other cousins, fathers, daughters, sons, husbands, wives who die each day.
Could I have predicted such a fate for this kid the morning I rescued him from climbing on the outside of a balcony three stories up — probably not. But as an adult, through my eyes, not my children’s, I saw a reckless child who was always stretching the boundaries within which he was seemingly confined. He was a good kid people will say who did some very stupid things. What I see now is a child who will grow up never really knowing or remembering his father who chose that ultimate high over love.
Please do not feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for the countless kids left behind. Feel sorry for my children who have to always look at those pictures of them growing up alongside their cousin who will eventually fade from our collective memory.
