Death Be Not Proud

Leo was 22 and always smiling. He loved ping pong. He called his mother every day. She would send him “care packages” once a week. He drank too much but never touched hard drugs. 4 months after leaving treatment he couldn’t sleep and was given what he thought was Xanax by someone at an AA meeting. It was laced with Fentanyl and he died that night in his bed.

Mary was 26 and had a 2 year old daughter. She would FaceTime her daughter every night. She would tell her that once she got home, she would never leave her again. She started spending all her days around another client named Travis. They fell in love. They would leave together. They smoked fentanyl in his truck in South Carolina. She died and he was arrested. She never made it home to her daughter.

Bruce was 57. He had been to over twenty rehabs. He arrived late night. Drunk and yellow. He was overweight. He smelled terrible. He pissed himself. He went to the hospital and was “medically cleared for treatment”. He got back to the rehab and went to sleep. He had a heart attack and died in room 3 at 4:29am.

Dennis was 36. He paced up and down the patio for the first two weeks. The last two weeks he ate. Meals, sandwiches, snacks, candy, cookies, and ice cream. Bowls and bowls of ice cream. He must’ve gained 40 pounds. He had to go to Walmart and buy all new clothes that would fit his new frame. When he got home he shot himself in the head in his bathtub. He had a wife and 4 kids.

Wanda was 43 and from Alabama. An alcoholic. She was under 100 pounds and could barely walk when she arrived. The whites of her eyes were yellow. She spent two days at the hospital. When she returned, she was in a wheelchair and couldn’t speak. She looked worse. The transpo staff handed me her hospital discharge papers. I immediately told the staff to bring her to a different hospital. 4 hours later a doctor from the new hospital called and told me “Wanda will never check out of here”. Her family was notified and eleven days later she was dead.

Marcia was a kind, fat, staff member with a beautiful face. She had 18 months clean. She was gentle and patient. She would sit with the most annoying clients and talk to them for hours. She would bring food for the other staff members. She worked hard but made a ton of mistakes. She started calling out sick a lot. She said she was dealing with “personal issues”. She missed 3 days straight and on the 4th day hung herself in the closet of her sober living. She was 28 years old.

Nathesia was 51 and muscular. She had a year clean when she was hired. She had 4 kids and had lost custody of all of them. The female clients called her “mom”. She knew everything about the court system and was constantly giving clients legal advice. She disappeared one day mid shift. I heard she was back on the streets smoking crack. A month later she called me sobbing. She said I’m sorry and I said that’s okay. Later that year she was hit by a car and killed. It was on the news.

Skye was 23. A big good looking oaf of a kid. He bounced when he walked. He was sweet and naive. He would always ask me to “hang out for a little”. He was a big Bob Dylan fan. I told him about a song he had never heard called, “Up To Me” that was never released on any album. He listened to it over and over and over again. He must’ve played it 500 times in 30 days. After treatment he went downtown and OD’d at homeless encampment. His pockets were emptied, his backpack stolen, and it took them a week to identify his body.

Yuri was a 40 year old drug counselor with 6 years clean. He grew up in a Russian orphanage and was adopted by an American couple at age 9. His clients loved him. He was empathetic and emotional. He understood them. He helped people work through their trauma. The staff loved him as well. He chain smoked cigarettes and his middle and index fingers were stained brown and yellow. He had an amazing laugh. He told me he was lonely and his new addiction was prostitutes. He relapsed one weekend. Overdosed and died on a patio chair in the backyard of his mother’s house.

And I thought about Yuri today. And those prostitutes. And how he told me once, “I always wind up telling them I love them”