July 12 2007

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.
I choke on those words, They are large stones in my throat. Today, he would have been twenty years old. He died on a clear, sunny Seattle day. The sun was shining off of Elliot Bay bringing cool breezes to the top of Queen Anne hill.
He had been clean for a year when he took that fatal dose. So close. So close, now so far away.

I didn't know until much too late that Dallas hadn't taken the divorce of his father and I well. He had gone to stay with his father for a while and from there started smoking pot, trying RX pills with his friends. He first tried heroin when he was 15. I never knew. I was never told. Until he was addicted. My only thought was that my love would save him. I knew my love could save him. I still remember as if it were yesterday that vicious phone call. Not my son! Not Dallas! I did an immediate intervention, flying to Florida that night and bringing him back home... filling his life with mommy love and care. It seemed for a while I had succeeded in saving him. I was going to get my son back from the brink of disaster and possible death.

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. Over the almost 4 years of his addiction, he ran from every kind of help. And to be honest, our biggest problem was money. I 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 had only had the money, he could have had the same chance for recovery as a child of parents with better means. I had always been proud of being a single mom, taking care of my children, working hard. But it was then that I hated myself. Blamed myself for being poor. 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.

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 been through in his life. He stayed off of heroin as far as I knew, 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.
br>He said he didn't feel the craving for heroin like he used to and could take it or leave it. I believed that one day we would kill this demon for good and my beauty, my baby, would be saved.
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 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 to give 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.
Oh 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 went to my room and laid down, as I had to work again that night and needed 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, he wanted his privacy. I left my own door open. The next thing I knew my youngest, who was twelve at the time, 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 up and 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." Dallas was on the floor, half on and half of his mattress, with his head on the bed as if he had just 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". He dropped away from my hands, his head falling back, the death rattle exploding in my ears. I saw his lips. They were purple, and there was no life in his body.
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 what it felt like, what it all looked like.
My heart had exploded. All I could see was black, except his body, his lips, I've never had tunnel vision but I knew this is what tunnel vision looks like. My child... my child.
I was screaming. I could hear myself but I couldn't stop... I couldn't catch my breath. My tongue was stuck, it just wouldn't move. I felt as if my lungs were burning. I pulled him to the floor and started CPR. In my heart, in my heart, in my heart... I knew he was gone. My young son was hysterical, screaming "Call 911, call 911!". He paced 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 while they were working on Dallas but I could hear everything. Then the moment I dreaded, dreaded yet was already trying to process, I heard someone say "Call it" and someone else say "1:57" A paramedic came to me 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 then I was in the room, calling my son's name. It seems now as if I floated in there, I can't remember feeling my feet on the floor.
I picked up my boy 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." He was there with me and we held him. We sat with him.
I remember I said "His bones are hard". How strange the things we think and say when our minds are overwhelmed and locked down. The coroner arrived and said it was time. I said "Time for what?" I looked over and saw the stretcher and the body bag. A body bag for my son.
I told his brother, "Give Dallas one last kiss"...that little boy dug his face into his brothers face, if a kiss could have brought him back to life, that kiss would have. I had to help him get back up, he was in shock but I didn't know it then. 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 living 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. For that I am so grateful. They saw the needle and the heroin but they treated him with dignity. I remember telling them, "He's just a little boy, He's just a little boy."
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. I 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. For my belief that above all, mommy's love and endurance could 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 remember that my son lay dying, while I was in the next room. While I slept, my son died. My mommy soul didn't warn me, didn't wake me. I failed my beautiful, beautiful child. 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 his 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 only destruction or death is the end result of drugs.

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 that their death is also the death of their whole family in many, many ways. The sorrow never goes away, the pain and madness of a mother's mind living with a dead child never goes away. 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 baby. Meth kills. RX abuse kills. Oxycontin kills. Ecstacy kills. Drug abuse... it kills. My son should know.

I love you Dallas,
momma loves you
October 10 2007