Delicate strands
of madness

burn like sulphur
beneath the surface

sitting at the dinner table
like wounds
beyond tourniquets

hanging
from the windows
like scars

and the intimidating way
death tries

to erase your shadow
from the surfaces
of our faces

push our hearts
through the center
of stones...

In this country
without language

I ride like a question
on an empty bus

drowning in the stillness
I saw reflected
in your eyes--

postcards from all the places
you will never go

And there are no destinations
left for me

on this side
of the Island of July

this side of the wasteland
of bitterness

this country
of your hopeless goodbye.

The young ones grasp
at the surface of your drowning.

For scraps of happiness.
Found in your pockets
and your empty shoes.

You hum in us.
Like a little motor.

This is what we have learned finally-
the periods that end things.

I wonder at them. Watch them, watching me
watching you,
in the places they can't see.

I wonder at you, were you just a dream?
Did you even exist at all?

I know you have a past.

We have these empty shoes
and sad clothes.
We have photographs.

First Mother's Day Without Dallas
May 11 2008


Once
I had a whole hand.

Enough children
for a fist.

For kneading, protecting,
opening and closing doors.

But those two hills in worry
you must climb

drop you off
in the end.

Into the sea
with it's false bottom.

And like a heart,
or the word gone

death always begins
in a dream.

Splitting you from life
like an atom.

Just checking in with some thoughts. I've been deleting alot of posts again.

It has been almost a year now. Or yesterday. Or a thousand years ago.
Some days time is just a blur. An idea.
Others days... all I can hear is the tick of that clock.

I haven't thought of suicide since April. I must be making progress.
I try not to think if I am, or not. It just gets in the way.
Dallas must have finally got his wish to take care of me. I'm still here.

I've been able to return to music I wasn't able to listen to for a long time.
Songs he loved, songs that remind me of him, songs he used to cover.
Well, to be honest, I find him in every song. Every single one.
He was music and music was him. I don't seperate them.

I watch the progress of his friends as if it were his own, seeking through them...
a touchstone to his time apart from me. Him, through their eyes.
His brothers are still suffering in their ways. Each playing out their emotions
in different ways... anger, depression, carelessness, apathy.
Always in the stillness... the question in their eyes. The sadness.

I have been touched by beautiful people since my son died.
They eradicate the absolute unkindness and indifference I have encountered after July.
Restored my faith that human beings do desire to be compassionate.

I must have read now about 60 to 70 books on death, grieving, afterlife,
religion, spirituality, quantum physics, mediumship and anything associated.
If I said it has made anything easier I would be lying. But I have learned oh so many things.
I can say in complete comfort, that I no longer fear death. Not my own.
I know, I will see Dallas again. I know he is waiting for me. He'll be there.

I do admit though, I have becme obsessed with the other children.
Perhaps in a more smothering way. Fear of them walking out the door.
For the oldest ones... fear I won't see them again. It is irrational, but explained.. in grief.
They don't appreciate it much. And let me know.
But I wonder if they understand. I wonder if Dallas' friends know, how I worry for them too.


Noticing how each of these short paragraphs has started with an 'I', save one or two,
makes me wonder if this is more about me and my journey, or helping others.
I think it is about both. I wonder sometimes if anything I have said, either in my "stories"
or my poetry has made any difference at all, however small.
I started this blog to honor my son. To tell his story. To make a difference in how
someone may look at grief, or an addicted child. To perhaps along the way... change
a kids mind about drug use.

And though I may never know if I have made a difference, or if my son's story means anything
to anyone outside of myself, I know that it matters. It means something.
It means something to honor a short but immense life. It means something to speak or write words that will make someone else realize they are not alone.
It means something... words. Words matter. More than people realize.
That old childhood sing song "Sticks and Stones"... it's not true. Not at all.
Words are so powerful. The hurt or they heal.

So I will continue writing to my son through poetry and stories.
I will do that for the rest of my life. This blog may change after a while.
But it will always be in honor of my beautiful son, my gentle spirit.
However long I remain after him... time could never hold the joy it once did when he
existed in my world. I pray time is kind to me for the rest of this journey.
It has taken too much already. More than it should have.
I pray for some peace, knowledge and intuition.
And may it pass quickly.

The absolute silence
of death
vibrated the air

his body a boat
floating without water
two X's screaming
from his eyes.

And these hands,
these hands
beating like heartbeats

on the cold dead
of his skin.

Fingers snapping
like beans.

And I lay dead
for days...
for a thousand years,
never meeting him
along the way.

Jesus raised Lazarus
but I was too late
too late...
to measure odds
into evens...

to even... to even...

Twelfth of July
two thousand and seven.

All forty two years of me
rubbed out.

No footprints.
No fingerprints.
No photographs.
Ghosts.

They hurt
to hear me say it.

So I don't.

And they burn their hands
in rubble
to find me.

But they won't.
They won't.

First glance in the funeral home, after the Medical Examiner.......



Oh! The wicked trembling of his youth
popping sun, fire licks and blisters...

all still. As a stone.
As if unhurt as if,
undrawn
from the strange angle of the world.

Nothing disturbs him now...
that white glow, that white glow...
save the slight upturn of his lip, a slip
of nerve
they prodded out and carelessly returned.

They found no mistake in him, no mistake
save the act of their doing.

My unswaddled child.
Oh! The rage, rage and sorrow!
Shaking deep, and rumbling.
Not blinking or moving.
slipping....slipping....

How do I look at him now and live?
How do I see this but disbelieve?

A blood red moon.
It’s a blood red moon.

A mouth gapes open
in a black wave.

Stuff the sheet in,
but he's dead. He's dead.

And all the endless emptiness
of words
drops out...
"don't you die. Don't you fucking die on me!"

The noise.
The terrible noise.
Bare
blank
deafening.

Packed wounds
and cigarettes.
Cracked mirror
and a bloody basin.

God
got personal.

My son Dallas was born on October 10 1987 in St. Petersburg, Florida.
He died July 12 2007 in Seattle Washington of an accidental heroin overdose.
Today, he would have been twenty years old.
He died on a clear and sunny Seattle day, the sun shining off of Elliot Bay and bringing a cool breeze up to the top of Queen Anne hill.
He had been clean for a year when he took that fatal dose. So close. Now, so far away.

Dallas started out smoking pot, trying RX pills with his friends.
He first tried heroin when he was 15 and became addicted.
My only thought was that my love would save him. I knew my love could save him.
It seemed for a while I had succeeded. I was going to get my son back from the brink.
But Dallas soon started taking Oxycontin, and was then introduced to Meth.
In 2005, Dallas stopped taking all other drugs and began to use heroin exclusively.

At the end of 2005, the beginning of 2006, he became very ill from his heroin use.
Dallas finally tried to get clean, it was the hardest thing he ever did. He stayed off of heroin as far as we know, and began to drink heavily. In 2007, he told me he would shoot Oxycontin every so often. But that he was sticking to drinking beer and whiskey. He said he didn't feel the craving for heroin like he used to and could take it or leave it.

Over the almost 4 years of his addiction, he ran from every kind of help. And to be honest, our biggest problem was money. We didn't have any. Not to get him into a successful program, that would lead to his recovery. We tried methadone clinics, no matter which one we went to, we were told the waiting list was no less than six months. When a kid needs help, they can't wait six months. Beds were full everywhere. I feel that if I only had the money, he could have had the same chance for recovery as a child of parents with better means.

It just seemed that we couldn't get help anywhere. Money, waiting lists, not enough beds.. and on and on. Yes.. in the beginning and middle of his addiction, Dallas refused to get help.
But in the end, he was begging for it. He was scared, wore out, hopeful for the future. Sick and tired of being dope sick.

Sometime the afternoon before he died, he got heroin. I don't know how, or where or from who.
The stupid thing? I always tried to make sure he was flat broke, thinking if he didn't have money, he couldn't get his drug. After almost 4 years, I was still so naive. To this moment, I swear I never believed my son would die from heroin. I always knew, I just believed, we would get him help somehow, someway. I always had hope. Each day he was alive, there was hope for recovery.

The morning of his death, when I got home from work, Dallas helped me do the laundry.
His youngest brother went off to school. At 10:30 am I went to Dallas' room that he shared with his brother, and gave him his clean laundry. The last words he ever said to me were "Thanks momma".
From the corner of my eye, I saw he was looking up at me when he said this. I was busy, and didn't look at him. GOD!!! Why didn't I look at him? It would have been the last time I would look at his beautiful face alive. But I didn't look at him, and left the room. I will always regret that!

I went to my room and laid down, as I had to work again that night and I had to get up soon for the youngest one coming home from school. Dallas shut his door and I thought nothing of it, I thought he may be getting dressed, or he was nineteen, wanted his privacy. I left my own door open.
The next thing I knew, my youngest, who was twelve, was yelling, "The door's locked, I can't get in", it was about 1:30 pm.
I told him to knock, Dallas was probably sleeping. He said he had already done that, but something in his face when I looked at him, made me get off the bed and go to the door.

I started calling Dallas' name, no answer. Dallas never locked the door.
It was then, my hand started shaking and I got a tool to pick the lock. Time was so slow.
So unreal, as if my mind was racing and my fingers were numb.
As soon as we opened the door, I called "Dallas?" and his brother said "He's Dead."
He was on the floor, with his head on the bed, as if he had fallen asleep there.
I said "No he's not"... and went over to him.

I picked him up, thinking he was simply "out of it", and he dropped away from me. I saw his lips.
They were purple, and there was no life in his body. When I picked him up, I heard all the air escape through his mouth. There are no words in any language that I can use to describe the feeling in me.
The frozen panic and shock in my mind, I will never forget how it feels, what it felt like.

I started screaming I could hear myself but couldn't stop... I could not catch my breath.
My tongue was stuck I felt as if my lungs were burning. I pulled him to the floor and started CPR.
In my heart I knew he was gone.
My young son was hysterical, screaming "Call 911, call 911". He walked in and out of the room, not
knowing what to do, looking at his brother, turning away...looking and turning away.
My beautiful Dallas. Dead.
As I sit here writing this, I still do not believe he is dead.

The paramedics used everything in their arsenal to give me back my boy.
Even when I think, they themselves knew it was futile.
They wouldn't let us in the room when they were working on Dallas.
They made us stay in the foyer by the stairs. I could hear everything. The moment I heard someone say "Call it" and someone else say "1:57" a paramedic was at my side and said "Ma'am, we tried everything".... I said "Is he alive", he said "No Ma'am he's not."

I don't know how I got into that room, one second I was on the stairs, but then I was in the room, calling my son's name. it almost seems as if I floated into the room, I can't remember feeling my feet on the floor.
I picked my boy up and held him in my lap. The only thing I could do... look at him, talk to him. Talk to him and rock him.
I remember I said "Dead is dead Dal" "Dead is Dead". "Do you know you are dead?"

I held him for a long time.
I combed his long hair, he was cold already and very clammy.
I remember now, I blew on him, like you do when they are babies and they are sweating because it's hot. His lips weren't purple anymore. I just held him, and I told his brother, "Come and help me hold him."
That's all he needed, he was there with me and we held him. We buttoned up his pants that they had unbuttoned, he was shirtless, and sat with him. I remember I said "His bones are hard".
How strange the things we think and say when our minds are overwhelmed.
The coroner arrived and said it was time. I said "Time for what?"
And I looked over and saw the stretcher and the body bag.

I told them I was taking his hair. I took his hair into a ponytail and cut it with their help. I wrapped it in a piece of buckskin.
I told his brother, "Give Dallas one last kiss"...
that little boy dug his face into his brothers face... if his kiss could have brought him back to life, it would have. I had to help him get back up, he was as I... in shock.
He worshipped Dallas. The sun rose and set on Dallas. And he literally saw it ripped from his life forever. Dallas' three brothers worshpped his love and humor and gentleness with them. And his advice... always advising them in the most intelligent way.

I held my baby in the beginning of his life. How blessed am I, to have held my baby in the end.
My greatest fear, was that he would die alone somewhere... die in an alley or in another place where noone knew him. Dallas had not gotten to that point of being on the street with his addiction, but as addiction plays out... inevitability insures, it is where you end up.

They treated my son with dignity.. the Paramedics, the Police and the Medical Examiner, and for that I am grateful. They saw the needle and the heroin, but they treated him with dignity.
They told me later the needle and heroin bag were sitting next to my son. I never saw that.
From the moment I opened that bedroom door, I saw only my son. Not the curtains, the window, the bed, the dresser.... only his little body so quiet and still.


Many days...I live that moment of finding him moment after moment, and replay it over and over. I relive his whole life everyday. I'm very tired.
I'm exhausted from the grief, exhausted from mother's guilt, exhausted from the pain and exhausted with the exhaustion.
I look back and hate myself for my stupidity, my belief that above all, mommy's love and endurance would save him.
I hate myself for being too poor to help my son get into a program that could have saved him.
Basically, I hate myself for losing the most precious thing in the world.
And in all honesty for the rest of my life, I will know that my son lay dying, while I was in the next room. While I slept, my son died. No amount of therapy will cure that for me.
It will never go away. And I am so very tired.

I know so much more now. But it doesn't help my son. That makes me so angry.
I am never angry at him. He was just a kid who had a demon on his back.
Yes, he chose to experiment. But the heroin chose for him after that. It chose for him.

In my heart, I want it to slap someone in the face with this story. I want it to pull their hair and knock them down. I want it to make one someone, stop and swear they will never ever experiment with heroin. Or any drug.
In my logical mind, I know it won't. But this is the result of drugs. There is only one result.

If one kid could crawl into the heart of someone who has lost a child to drugs, by the laws of the universe, he wouldn't be able to take the pain.
I wish kids knew, how their death is also the death of their whole family. The sorrow never goes away, nor the pain in the mind.
Some people never heal. Their lives forever broken. I know Dallas would want me to tell his story. He loathed himself for what he had become. He was never proud, never. It made him sad and lonely and ashamed. He always told other people, "Don't ever get started in drugs, man...it will kill everything."
I know in my soul... if he could do it all again... he would have never touched heroin.
Heroin kills. Meth kills. RX abuse kills. Oxycontin kills. Ecstacy kills. Drug abuse... kills.
My son should know.

I love you Dallas, momma loves you.
October 10 2007