Just Jax...

When it’s too hard to look back and you’re too afraid to look forward, 

look right beside you and I will be there…

Someone told me today that I have an unhealthy relationship with my dog.

What they don’t know, and couldn’t possibly understand, is that during my darkest days it is my dog, Jax, that saved my life.

Just a puppy when my son died, I formed a bond with Jax that has made it possible for me to not just survive losing my son, but to actually feel something other than pure anguish. The days right after my son’s death were filled with heartfelt cards and caring phone calls. Family and friends flooded me with visits and dinner invitations, making it a point to check with each other, to make sure someone was checking on me.

Jax, just a few months old at the time, saw to it that I got out of bed everyday. His hunger was his priority and my sadness didn’t really interest him, yet every morning, belly full and exhausted from about 20 minutes of play, Jax would snuggle up on the couch next to me and let me feel whatever it was I was feeling that day. He didn’t judge me on the days I couldn’t find the energy to shower, he didn’t question my eating habits or force me to look through the pictures of my son that I couldn’t bare to see. Instead he would sit with his head on my lap and watch me carefully as I cried and, on special occasions, would bounce around the room with bursts of energy in what I swear was a premeditated effort to make me smile. He was on the beach with me when I spread my son’s ashes and he didn’t leave my side when I went through my son’s belongings and sobbed because his scent had begun to fade from his things.

As the months passed, Jax and I began to understand each other. On the days that I ventured out of my house Jax was always my co-pilot. He understood, but didn’t like, the doggy seat-belt I required him to wear in the front seat of my car. And I replaced, without too much scolding, the two human seat belts that he defiantly chewed through when I took more time then he felt was necessary away from the car. He learned that both Starbucks and the drive thru pharmacy have dog treats waiting for him and I learned to bring his “drool” towel whenever either one was on our agenda.

When our first winter was behind us, and summer came to call, it took Jax weeks to understand that he couldn’t assist me on my errands because it was simply too hot for him to stay in the car. Because the look on his face every time I left the house completely broke my heart I purchased a small plastic pool and allowed him “pool” time every evening. My efforts to please him, however, were often short lived as he would always find a way to sneak into the house (perhaps to punish me for leaving him home?) and dance all over my dark hardwood floors with his soaking wet feet.

Yes, Jax and I understood each other…

And we still do.

Jax still watches me carefully, on so many nights, when I just sit and cry. He finds a way to nudge me when he thinks a walk together might help or softly snuggles his head into my lap, letting his tired brown eyes find mine for just a moment...as if to say 'I am here and you are ok".

I have stood by him through several bouts of bladder stones and he has remained by my side long after the dinner invitations stopped and the concerned visitors faded away.

While everyone else has moved on, moved forward in a world I can’t bring myself to face without my son, Jax reminds me everyday that I am alive and I am loved.

In my mind, there just isn’t anything unhealthy about that.

“I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent, devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.” Doris Day

Running through the emptiness...

Nine months after my son died I ran my first half marathon. 

Never a runner, I found myself in desperate need of something to focus on. Grief takes different forms and for me grief meant I had to keep moving…running in fact…to escape the emptiness that was relentlessly trying to consume me.

It has been 2 and a-half years since I lost my son and I am still running. Doing everything I can to fend off the deep, austere, hollow feeling that makes me gasp for breath and clench my chest.

I still can’t believe he is gone.

Life has gone on, like I knew it would. I have managed through days and fought through nights, watching others live their lives and letting them think I am living mine. 

In reality though, I am just running.

I am running from the hollowness in the pit of my stomach, the tightness in my throat, the hole in my heart.

I am running from the fact that my son is dead.

I wonder if the thousands of runners that join me at the start line can see how truly broken I am. 

As we all see the sun rise and feel the promise of a new day, can they see the emptiness in my eyes? Can they sense the sadness that surrounds me? 

I have medals hanging in my house for each of the 23 runs I have completed since that first half marathon. Shining examples of how to avoid feeling anything. The same trophies that show others I have moved on with my life are merely reminders to myself that I am still running.

Running through life, with a smile on my face, hiding from the empty ache that doesn’t allow me to breath.

Because even now…after all these months have passed, I don’t want to stop running. I don’t want to feel what waits for me in the reality of my son’s death.

So for now I will keep finding solace in my ability to run, because as it turns out, running through the emptiness doesn't require a destination. 

Running from something or running toward something?

In the end it doesn't matter. 

Because it is the  slow, steady healing ability embedded within the run that is, for me, the destination.

Heroin isn't someone else's drug anymore

"America has been struggling with this silent assassin for decades. Year after year, our children fall prey to the siren that is heroin. States all across the country are reporting skyrocketing rates of intoxication, overdoses and death."

I am missing a lot of spoons.

This fact is not new to me. It is just a cold reminder of how addiction destroyed my son.

My spoons were used to further his habit, burned with now empty lighters that were innocently purchased with nothing more than candle lighting in mind.

For the rest of my life, every time I eat a bowl of cereal or indulge in mint chip ice cream, I will be reminded of the dirty drug that took my son.

I am the bereaved mother of an addict. This is my life. Every time I open a silverware drawer I am slapped with the death of my son.

In 2011, the year that claimed the life of my son, 178,000 Americans used heroin for the first time.(The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration). 

With statistics this heinous I can’t be the only mother missing spoons.

I grew up in the 80's, in a suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of LA. Gasoline hovered around .85 cents a gallon (I remember this because my friend and I would scour the floor of her Honda CRX for loose change and always came up with enough to drive all day). Kids had to graduate high school without the luxury of the internet and the call waiting beep on your land line was sheer luxury. We didn’t have cell phones, or email or Facetime.

And we sure as hell didn’t have heroin.

The most dangerous thing I did when I was a teenager was lather myself up with baby oil and bake myself in the afternoon sun.

Sure marijuana was around and I had a couple of drunk weekends, but heroin was strictly off limits. It wasn’t even an option. Not only was it not accessible, but it was a 'junkies' drug. No suburban kid in LA in the 80's was cooking heroin and shooting up. 

It was taboo.

Of course cocaine was the drug of choice back then and I suppose that I could have found it had I looked, but heroin? No. Heroin has taken a place within suburbia that my teenage self could never have imagined. Because life was simpler when I was a teenager. There was no such thing as social media, text conversations or online video game playing.

I never imagined I would have a strong, handsome, charismatic son who would succumb to heroin and die just days after his 20^th birthday.

Heroin was not part of my life. It was a 'junkies' drug after all. An intangible darkness that I couldn’t fathom becoming a part of my life.

Yet, here I am, in upper class suburbia.

And there it is, staring me in the face every time I open my silverware drawer.