Loss is always difficult, but for Joshua his father’s death held so much more. They had been estranged from birth. My ex-husband’s pattern was repeated with three other children during his third marriage as he was jailed, or on the run for some illegality committed to fund his addiction.
For Joshua, his father’s absence felt like rejection, when in fact it was protection from a very ill man who had abandoned everyone, including himself, for the insatiable craving of the fine brown powder that chased his veins. Their handful of encounters in Joshua’s lifetime had left him stung with the selfishness and carelessness of an addict who offered attention in the form of syringes and joints.
Joshua’s father, Daniel, spent the last few years of life on heavy prescription drugs, instead of heroin, as a result of hepatitis C acquired through sharing needles. In his last few years he had reached out to his son; but Joshua, angry from a lifetime of abandoned and shame over his father’s conduct, was unwilling to entertain the possibility.
Although Daniel fiercely loved Joshua on whatever level he was capable, its expression was lost in the hole created by his absence. Sometimes I wondered if the avoidance of his parental responsibility was punishment for me leaving him. Daniel’s parents had masterfully taught him how to use a child as a sword to severe each other’s limbs. I like to think Daniel stayed away to protect Joshua from his raging addict life filled with the usual suspects of deceit, manipulation and theft. My memory of Daniel’s kind, pre-drug-era nature, before the ravages of addiction ate his heart and conscience, helped me to believe the protective fairy tale.
But in reality there was nothing redeeming about Joshua and Daniel’s relationship; and yet the day Joshua received the call that his father lay in a coma, he sprinted to the hospital in Chicago. His father’s death was a twisted scene out of Twin Peaks, the only thing missing was the midget talking backwards. In the end, Joshua was abandoned by Daniels’s wife and mother to disconnect his father from life support, a man he barely knew. It was a brutal duty that should be required of no one, much less a distanced son who had already suffered so much loss at the hands of his father’s addiction.
As an act of forgiveness Joshua held his dying father until he took his last breath; Daniel opened his eyes and stared into his son’s face. Something, a breath, an entity, a spirit, exited Daniel’s body and entered my son’s; Joshua felt it instantly.
I had fastidiously sheltered my beautiful boy from drugs and alcohol throughout his childhood; neither was allowed in our home. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t do drugs. And I refused to allow anyone in our lives who did. But with his father’s death, everything I had done to spare Joshua from destruction of addiction for the 25 years of his life hit him with the force of a tsunami. It was cataclysmic.
Joshua’s drinking began in earnest within weeks. By 2002 it had poured into long-standing relationships — a girlfriend, a business partner, a roommate; he was changing before my eyes and I felt helpless to stop it. That same year weekend accidents became regular events, scraping his face, arms and legs, cutting his eyes and lips.
Each year, on the anniversary of his father’s death, Joshua’s grief, torment and what I would later come to recognize as manic psychosis, exploded into uncontrollable raging and sobs. I was profoundly frightened and helpless to clear the minefield that had become Joshua’s interior life.
As I sat in our new marble bathroom, I suddenly felt the cold beneath my feet. Haunting memories of my father’s addiction, Daniel’s addiction, and my own struggle with drugs rattled through the hallways of my brain. I shuddered. Since Italy, I had, at least on some level, denied the realization of my son’s alcoholism and convinced myself that his drinking had been a phase.
In the silence of our first showhome, the mothership hovering close by, a sickening feeling rose up from my stomach and into my throat. Was it possible my son would follow in his father’s and both his grandfathers’ footsteps? It seemed unimaginable that my sweet, artistic son could become the monsters I had known. I couldn’t bear the thought of him being swallowed alive by the disease.
I had been in jail, something my son had no inkling of. I knew no matter what lesson might be garnered from that experience, Joshua was wasn’t tough like me. I had been forged in addiction hell. It had made me a warrior.
Despite the seriousness of Joshua being arrested for drunk driving, my denial apparatus kicked in full throttle. This would be a turning point for him. The arrest would be enough to right his course. The drinking would stop.
Oh, Lord, I whispered, please protect Joshua and don’t let anyone harm him. Please let this be the end of his drinking.
I looked up to see Candler standing naked in the doorway of the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Joshua’s in jail,” I said.
“What?” Candler asked, flipping on the light.
My eyes cringed at the assault of the glaring overhead light, “Turn that off, would you,” I said.
The overhead silenced. Candler asked again, “Did he have an accident?”
I sat in silence. Candler approached me, “Is he all right?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.