Dear Maks,

“Are you telling me my son is dead?”

I keep hearing myself say that. Yet it didn’t feel like I said it. It felt like I was watching a movie and that was the most dramatic way for the character to discover the death of her son.

He didn’t answer me ya know. He said I had to call the police department.

Instead of saying you were dead he said, “he couldn’t be revived”.

I thought he was kidding.

I thought I would hear you laugh in the background at any minute because you had fooled me.

I hung up the phone and said, “oh my dear god, it finally happened.”

I didn’t cry.

Instead I fell numb.

I knew I should be hysterical, but I wasn’t.

I was numb.

I began to plan. I said to myself that you would be cremated. I continued to drive. Alone. With no idea where I was going…with no place to go…

Are you telling me my son is dead?

I hear it in my head, every day, over and over.

“He couldn’t be revived”.

I said, “I’m almost there, keep trying.”

He said, “He is cold Laurie”.

Cold.

Again they told me to call the police.

I refused.

They wanted me to identify your body.

I refused.

How could my last image of you be your cold body?

Then I started to cry. Sob actually.

The unimaginable had finally happened.

Somewhere, deep down, I think I always knew that you would die young.

A part of me knew I would speak at your funeral.

I can’t explain that feeling, that vision that I so often had.

But deep down, I knew.

Nothing could have prepared me for the moment I was told you “couldn’t be revived” though.

Nothing.

Why didn’t I see it??? How could I not have seen that you weren’t ready to be sober?

I knew you would struggle, but I never imagined you would use drugs the day you were released from rehab.

I believed in you god dammit.

More than you believed in yourself I guess.

I haven’t told anyone this, but the last time we spoke, the night before I was coming to bring you your things, I felt you weren’t sober. I pushed the thought away, rationally I couldn’t fathom that you were using drugs within 24 hours of being released from treatment. Rationally I didn’t even pause on my thought that you didn’t sound “right”. I ignored my gut instinct to question you. What if I had? Questioned you.

Suppose I would have told you that you sounded “off”? Sure, you would have denied it…but maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t have used that morning for fear that when I arrived I would have been able to see it on your face, in your eyes…the way I saw it every damn time.

Rationally I just couldn’t fathom that you were using.

I forgot that addiction is not rational.

None of it made sense to me then, and it still doesn’t today.

I look at pictures of you and I can still feel you…hear your voice…see your expressions.

It’s like you are on vacation and I will see you again.

But you aren’t, are you? On vacation.

No.

You couldn’t be revived.

You were cold before they even started to bring you back.

Are you telling me my son is dead?

Yes.

They should have just said yes.