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Winter is coming! Oh, wait, it’s already here.
It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years has come and gone. I hope your holiday was filled with cheer and good nature. Sometimes this can be an impossible task during the holidays when things happen. Things that are on the other side of the spectrum. I’m talking about the loss of a loved one.
It’s such a sad thing to lose a loved one and even sadder still when it happens around the holidays. A feeling of hopelessness comes over them instead.
I know of a couple of ladies who have lost a loved one during the holiday season. Theirs is a tragic story of addiction taking its toll once again. Both ladies were high school classmates and each lost a child during the holidays, each a year apart from the other.
Addicts are nothing more than a ticking time bomb that can trip at any given time for any reason what so ever. It isn’t a matter of self-control. That was lost a long time ago. All it takes is just a second to lose all that was gained in recovery. Someone could offer a free sample or just place the substance in front of them, even though they’ve been clean for over 30 years.
Imagine how hard it is for someone recent to recovery. Their bodies had built up a tolerance to their chosen substance over time. They knew what they could tolerate and forget how long it took to get that way. 30 days or 90 days have passed and they use again. Fallen as angels, and so sad, they never stood a chance.
As parents, they will ponder on whether there was something more they could have done. When in actuality there was not one thing they could have done to save their child. Now they must be careful their child doesn’t pull them over the edge of the cliff with them.
I know all this, because I’m the mother of an addict. I’ve come to accept that the inevitable may happen someday to my own son. I have no choice but to remind myself that he lives on borrowed time.
These ladies that I know, are my stepping stones. I watch them from a distance and see how they fare in surviving after losing their addict child. They have shown strength during a time of festivities.
Yes, I’m filled with fear of what is to come. I learned a long time ago how to find my comfort zone. I’m not sure how secure the zone is for me, but it does exist. It’s only a faint memory of how I was, and what I felt before my son ever existed, before he was even a thought or the planted seed in the womb.
I would have to go back to that time and remember how I was happy before he existed, happy when he existed, and hopefully to find comfort when he is gone.
For now he survives, a thin line is what he walks, that can break at any given moment, and I accept him as he is, was and will be.
Linda Nelson 