For my son
Nick, a Life
Nick was born in 1985 at Siler City’s natural birthing center. His mom’s pregnancy was excellent. After some 19 hours of difficult labor, Nick came into this world. His Apgar score was perfect. Before the age of two he had an extraordinary vocabulary. His mom, my first wife, wrote it in a notebook and the pediatrician chalked it up to our parenting. He was a very chatty, curious and good-humored little boy.
To me, his father, Nick’s appearance was a shock and a full-time learning lesson. Cradling his head or diaper changing were not ordeals but the whirlwind of a changed life and a schedule revolving around a tiny one was. It’s only long after that I can wonder at the pace of a child’s development. But at the time I thought a lot about the Jesuit saying that the influence on a child until age seven will make the individual. “The child is the father of the man”; that is, the life of the grown up Nick would be dependent on his early years. I used such thoughts to comfort myself during difficult times. As the years went on, I would get a phone call from a program representative tracking talented children asking about Nick’s status. Divorce from Nick’s mother, her growing mental illness, outlandish behavior, suicide attempts, the custody fights and expenses, the inability to see my children and long drives to the Sandhills and Wilmington to spend time with them caused me to tire of these phone calls. Nick is attending this school now. No, now he lives at this town or that town. By then he was entering his teen years and becoming increasingly uncontrollable. The slide into addiction had begun. But I clung to the belief that my influence on him could give him the tools to survive.
(1) Deficiencies
It would be grossly unfair to Nick and to us who loved him to describe his life through a long list of deficiencies. Some might know that he underwent four or more rehab stays and spent about two years in jails and prisons. Polk, the State’s clearing house, is a violent place. And the complexities and crushing conditions of even minimum security facilities are too much to go into now. To me these are not deficiencies but realities. They are neither highlights or low points in Nick’s life, but social punctuation marks that make outsiders pay attention. He and I missed many birthdays. We missed Christmases and Thanksgivings. But these were the surface signs only.
What most probably don’t know is that until age 18, Nick experienced about 12 address changes and attended about nine schools. For those who know about the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, also called ACES, Nick would have scored a stunning 5 or 6 on the standard ten question test, a reflection of childhood abuse, neglect and household dysfunction. These strong predictors foreshadowed future depression and a long list of chronic diseases. But ACES predictions are statistical, not inevitabilities. But the odds were high.
When he was a little boy, we shared so much. He was a loving son. But regardless of his innate talents and skills, no child could be expected to weather the onslaught of emotional and physical instability that made up Nick’s life. And yet he tried against all odds.
(2) A Search for Normalcy
I can’t claim to understand addiction. Through Nick I got glimpses, though. Counseling and therapy sessions had their uses, but they had their severe limits. Nick developed many skills to mask his behaviors or to hide his emotions. Today I see them like the drinking, gambling and drugging habits he developed. I see them as forms of self-medication or attempts to rebalance an unsteady life, to take control of himself instead of depending on institutions. He knew right from wrong and was guided by a strong moral inner voice. But he struggled to figure out what was normal, what was a balanced life, one without addictive behaviors. He feared he would repeat the troubled life of his mother, who was both loving and selfish, ebullient and then accusatory, then calculating, then manipulative. Only towards the end of her life did she admit being bipolar, but by then the destruction all around her was complete.
(3) Try, Try Again
Nick tried many things to do this thing we call life. He went the distance, which included some pretty hateful groups and nasty, intolerant language about others. At one point he had a gun. Early on I made it clear to him our relationship. I loved him but would not support him. Sober, he was clear-headed and reflective. Sober, he could maturely take responsibility and listen with an open mind. When he went silent, when there would be long spells of two or three months without hearing from him, then I could guess that a downward spiral was underway. Nick wrote many letters while he was in detention centers or prison. Some are painfully honest, a few are accusatory and utterly self-deceptive. Most reflect someone trying to figure out what happens next, and as he grew older, demonstrated a better awareness about the life skills he lacked, the mistakes he’d made, the people he’d hurt, and the cycle of hell he had created.
He managed to complete his GED. He took a philosophy class in prison. He asked for chess books. He taught another inmate how to read. In his trial and error approach to life, Nick picked up and mastered many positive skills. He was always good with his hands. Craftsmanship was something he relied on to keep himself honest. Arguments and loud words or clever excuses couldn’t improve a sloppy woodworking job. For the same reasons I think Nick loved cooking. Putting things together in an orderly and creative way was a mark of success. This was a kind of problem-solving he loved to do and his talents shone in these circumstances.
But his artistry and skillful work could not prevent himself from relapsing. His confidence would rise, he would declare himself cured or to be in sufficient control of himself and his future and then the destruction would begin, engulfing himself and those around him. It included those who loved him. It included his children.
(4) An Awakening
Neither strict Christian interpretations about sin and guilt seemed to help. Nor did the friendly tolerance of his Quaker schooling seem useful. What I’m saying now is based on some talks with Nick but a lot of it is conjecture. As a non-addict, I can’t claim to really have known my son or to understanding the intense cravings he felt or the rush of relief that heroin could bring. As an outsider, my knowledge is limited. But I am glad to know Nick abandoned many of the absolutes that bound him — the fronting as a toxic male, the racial binary that caused him so much pain, his mother’s diseased love, societal definitions of success and failure and the normalcy of suburban material life. One time he told me that he was listening to a lot of NPR while in prison — a far cry from the dark Web paranoia he’d visited.
I gave him a few books, an outline of Buddhism’s history and a copy of the Chuangtzu, a Chinese Taoist classic that has similarities to the kind of meditation he was trying. I think he began to understand how the lines that separated an addict’s life from a non-addict’s could be erased, that life lived by all was suffering. That birth, life, aging and death are suffering, that having stuff you don’t want is suffering, and yearning for things you don’t have is suffering. In his last year of life Nick exhibited the kind of mindfulness, awareness of himself and his relation to others, that I had waited for. He still struggled, he still infuriated, demanded and argued, but seemed to have started a transformative process. I think one of the Chuangtzu stories describes a man who undergoes crippling, disfiguring diseases that push his stomach one way, bends his head in another, and twists his limbs. Is he bothered? Isn’t he angry at life’s unfairness? Ssh! he says, Don’t interrupt the processes of nature. Perhaps, he says, his body will take the shape of a boat and his arms become an oar and steering board, and he will sail into the distance. Perhaps he will sprout wings and feathers and fly away.
(5) Release
Nick died twice. Naloxone revived him and he was released to go home. He resumed drug use soon after and this time was not rescued. He had a strong recovery group. He had finally reached a stage where he identified with his group of fellow strugglers and sufferers, and gone was the arrogance that he was better than those in AA or NA, who had served time, who were stuck, who were poor, who were disowned, who were losers, who had hit rock bottom. But I don’t think he could resist the memory of the drug rush and its release from cares and worries. And he was too damned smart, thinking he could control substances that were uncontrollable, more powerful than rational thought, more powerful than the love he had for his children. Neither prayer nor love nor devotion could erase that memory, which to me only suggests the level of enduring suffering Nick experienced all his life. Nick did not die alone in his final moments and he did not die unloved. This does not mean relief to all of us. The physical debts and damage are real. But in a small way I am thankful.
When he was only five or six years old he drew a picture of caged birds based on a counting book we read. “Five fingers can give them freedom” read the text, and the illustration showed a hand unlocking the cage and the birds flying out. But in Nick’s version there were not four birds, but three. In my own world then, in my own suffering, I saw those three birds he drew as we three — Nick, his sister, and myself.
Soon these prison walls will disappear
I’ll fly away
Like a bird then I shall fly from here
I’ll fly away
I’ll fly away in the morning,
I’ll fly away.
When I die,
Hallelujah by and by
I will fly away.
