I began writing this in December of 2003. My husband of 14 years was also addicted to drugs and alcohol. He lost the battle, as he refused to surrender to the disease. His body was found 3 weeks after he took his own life. We had been seperated for exactly 30 days at the time. He addresses me from the other side. My wounded heart translates his final farewell. The details described below are an accurate unfolding of events...

ANGUISHED SOUL; SILENTLY SCREAMING
As my soul entered into the physical world it began to seek the desired poison.
You quickly learned; as did I, that perception becomes reality. My darling wife, it is a cruel world; is it not? I am an addict. You are an addict. Our souls originate from one.
You own my loyalty; you must never disagree with me.
My radiant heat comes from the temper within me.
I am rarely warm.
I have never tasted the salt of a fallen tear.
Never prejudiced; always dogmatic, opinionated, and spiteful.
My disease has overcome my strong and healthy body.
In my heart is the desire to be right with the world. I am afraid of rejection, but
feel that the whole world rejects me. I try to be what the world wants me to be. This is
an impossible task, because the world wants nothing from me. I am always trying to meet
expectations that aren’t really there. I become increasingly frustrated.
I absorb the poison.
I am emotionally removed.
You can see me, but I am so far away. My defenses and masks are seldom removed. When they are----my heart becomes one with yours. I am trapped. Engulfed. Through my eyes, you can see my anguished soul; silently screaming. I reach out my hand. I cannot feel your touch. Pray for my release. It is a terminal disease. It happened so slowly; but suddenly my life is over. Without regard for you, I remove myself from the world.
You did pray for me to be released from my pain…didn’t you?
As my death has been revealed to you, I can see the world crash down around you.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Continue to live. Cleanse your soul. Choose to recover. People in your life hold you close, yet you are alone with your suffering. I take you with me, yet you remain where I left you. Devastated; you wonder why I had to die alone.
Nature begins to decay my body. My final farewell (blood red in color) drips down the white wall beside me. I watch you gasp uncontrollably.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Continue to live.
A brass glimmer catches your eye. Gently you move the sacred blanket where my body and soul had finally found comfort. Although tarnished and tacky from natures process of decay, a small area of the cross shines brightly for you. As the cold heavy edges rest upon your fingers, I transcend toward you. The light exists in your heart. My defenses and masks are removed. My heart becomes one with yours. I can hear your anguished soul silently screaming. I am an addict. My soul has been poisoned.
Pain does not punish.
In order for you to live; you must think of me every day.
My actions are my lifelong gift to you.
You are an addict.
Your soul has been poisoned.
Choose to recover.

Tears were streaming down my mother’s face as she stood in front of me, “Daddy’s dead” she said and she moved to my little brother and repeated what she had just said to me. I was aware of what that meant. My father had explained it to me a couple years prior. I was sitting in the same big old chair in the living room where I had just received the news of his death. “Everyone dies someday” he said to me. I had cried for hours while he was at work that day. I remember my mother speaking with him on the phone . “She won’t stop crying, I can’t even get her to go to sleep.” Later that night he explained to me the best way he knew how to repair any damage to a four year old’s worried mind. “Sugar, you are going to be all grown up and taking care of yourself before anything like that happens to mommy or daddy. Nothing like that is going to happen for a very long time.”
His heart stopped when he had been grocery shopping that night with my mother. The car would not start and he was trying to evaluate the problem when he clutched his
chest. He died before the ambulance arrived. It did not seem like a long time even to a four year old, between the conversation with my father and the news of his death.
My grand mother and uncle arrived a few hours later and worked all night to pack the house and move us back to Maine with them. As he walked through the front door of the house, I said “Hi, uncle Bob”. He was our family comedian, easy going with a little bit of a belly and a quick smile. That day as he walked through the front door he gently kissed my forehead and said “Hi Reenie”. My nickname I had inherited from my little brother who tried to say Noreen and somehow only got the Reen part correct. He was on the phone a few minutes later at my father’s desk in the dining room of our home. I was standing beside him tugging on his shirt sleeve. “What day is today?” I never wanted to forget this day. I knew my life would change forever.
Technology advanced over the years and I began college. Without objection and at the urging of my family I chose Nursing as a course of study. I was in my last semester of school when introduced to cardiac nursing. I immediately knew that I wanted to specialize in this field. I understood it, liked it, and craved more of it. I finished school and began my career. One of the best feelings is putting the paddles on a technically dead person’s chest and with the burst of electrical energy bringing them back to the one’s they love. I am reminded of my own loss and what a wonderful thing it is to return to a loved one someone who was thought to be gone forever. For every successful resuscitation
I often think “This one’s for you Dad”. Being able to provide what was not provided for me is the biggest reward in my life.

Four years ago today, I thought my life was over. June 4th 2003, I didn't care if I lived or died. Almost to the minute on this day was my first night in a residential drug treatment facility. It was pouring down rain. Ever notice the correlation with rain and major life transition? It was like the dark sky opened up and tears fell freely. The best lesson I learned is that no matter how dark and desperate life may seem, we do not know what the future holds for us...Everything in my life is completely different. We do not hold the answers. I think about the people in my life now, that I did not know then. How much I love them, and vice-a-versa. As I sit here tonight I wonder and anticipate the people in my future. Did you know... that four years ago tonight it was pouring down rain?

I have been to place. I remain physically present with the verbal ability to communicate where I am. I continue talking. But I do not hear my voice. My eyes continue to blink, but the external surroundings are gone. My external surroundings are silent. I hear noise and I see the people in this other place and my memory totally recreates a scene from the distant past. Every word, every tactile sensation, every emotion, from the past is there and it's real.
Where is this place? It seems that it must be from within, brought forth by an external power. For this experience I am grateful. DH

How much of life is lost on what we are thinking about doing in the future, what we have done in the past, what we could be doing right now instead? Besides that, we are constantly bombarded by external stimuli (demanding of our attention). I would like to have an internal dial, so that interactions do not need to be diluted by everything else going on in life. I imagine how content I would be, to live in the moment. "Silence is Golden". I am going to work on this...me thinks. DH

I believe the soul is infinite. The spirit is good for a lifetime. It filters what the soul needs. Why am I fearful to say that I believe in reincarnation? Maybe because I have had the "clutch the pearls" reaction too many times. I am basically conservative in life and this idea even surprises me. I feel like I have lived before and will go on to live another life, and another...I just see God letting us go off into the world at birth, we find our way, and ultimately I think God waits for us to find our way back to him. In a way that makes us better and better every go around. There are no failures, just a varied amount of lessons to be learned.

“Leave just one of them!” my mother screamed as she reached through the front
passenger window of our old four door Ford. I sat in the middle of the bench seat with my father behind the steering wheel to my left. I was just learning to talk and my language skills were limited. I loved both of my brothers who were sitting in the back seat, but I hoped not to be the one to be left behind. My mother’s fingers biting into my right upper arm was my only physical sensation. The rest of my body was without feeling. My heart was introduced to a world of terror and my body was paralyzed with fear. “Lock the doors.” My father’s matter of fact statement was directed at my older brother Eric. “Let go!” He leaned across me, peeled her fingers from my arm, shielded me with his body, cranked up the window, and locked the door all in one swift movement. I never saw her look like this before. What was wrong with her? She had recently lost a significant amount of weight. Her eyes looked
straight ahead but not at anyone or anything in particular. She had something on her
mind. Her lips involuntarily moved in and out like she was going to give a gentle kiss. I would see this look several times over the next fifteen years until I was old
enough to leave the house for college. It never got any easier.
My father died suddenly three years later, months prior to my seventh birthday,
and I began to shield myself. From that day forward, I woke up every morning not
knowing whether the day would be based on fact or fiction. Love and fear became my
parallel reality. Everything else was to be determined.
My mother was a delusional schizophrenic. Sporadically she took the prescribed medication, and when she did, she was coherent, kind, and loving. As her medication would keep her balanced so were our lives. She was consistent with our homework and bedtime rules. She fixed us a snack after school so that we would not be hungry while she cooked dinner. She was awake early cooking breakfast. I never owned an alarm clock until I moved out. She woke me for school, never upset when I complained or went back to sleep. She always had a pleasant gentle smile on her face. She put out clean clothes every morning and I was not allowed to wear anything with a stain or tear in the fabric. When my mother would return from being hospitalized (usually two weeks at a time), she was like an angel truly sent from above. She had a genuine heart. A heart that I continue to strive for today in my own personal dealings with people. My mother would talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything. The meanest person in the world would soften and begin to smile (even if ever so slightly) at least once while interacting with her. They softened not because she was funny, but because it was obvious that she did not have a mean bone in her body. Her kind heart had a contagious affect. She related on any level. She was generally good to everyone, and she loved me (unconditionally). She loved me no matter who I was, or what I said or did.
She struggled with her disease and tried to maintain a normal existence. She would be hospitalized each time she decided that she felt well enough to stop taking her medications. The medication balanced her chemically when it was in her system. The more distance between her and the medication resulted in an increased severity of her symptoms which included hallucinations (visual, auditory and cognitive), aggressive behavior, religious rituals, and being completely unreachable by anyone outside of her current reality.
I remember the time I was safely tucked away in my small town elementary school and the principal was knocking at the classroom door asking me to go to the front office with him. “Have things been going o.k. at home for you?” he asked as we walked down the hallway together. I didn’t answer. I was afraid that if I were to respond verbally that I would burst into tears. I nodded as if to indicate that everything was o.k.
I saw my mother and little brother standing inside of the main entrance to the school, which was all glass with two big heavy swinging doors. I could see the snow outside and wondered why mom didn’t look tired after walking four miles in the middle of a Maine winter. We did not own a car, and even if we did, she couldn’t drive. She looked completely ready for the walk back. My mother was accusing the principal of losing one of her children. “Where is Robby's twin brother….Kevin?”
“Noreen and Robby are the only children of yours that have ever been in my care” he explained carefully. Again, that paralyzed feeling. Robby was thirteen months younger than me, and I would have gone to any length to protect him. If I had another brother---where was he? Was he ok? I needed to go find him. Why did my heart suddenly feel like a rock in the middle of my chest? My mother walked home and I went back to my fourth grade classroom. A few days later she was at the end of our driveway. I tried to talk her into going back inside of our mobile home. I was afraid she might get lost or get hit by a car and never come home; and sometimes; a small part of the back of my mind wished for that to happen. Things were much easier when she would stay in bed for days on end. She said “Look, there’s daddy. See? He’s in the doorway.” “Mom….” I said “that’s the Santa face you put there. Remember?”.
I thought back to a few weeks prior. Mom, Robby, and I had decorated the tree and our small mobile home for the Christmas holiday. I didn’t feel like celebrating today. The mere mention of my father brought tears to my eyes. He had died less than a year ago and I needed him so much. Especially at that moment in time. I wanted to be able to see my father’s face with her. I squinted my eyes and tried to see him. For a moment I thought that I could see him. I knew that it wasn’t him and my heart was breaking. Shortly thereafter she was admitted to the hospital.
I was afraid of her disease. I realize now that a psychological disease is the center of one’s personality; therefore being fearful of the disease is being fearful of the person. Fear became as comfortable and “normal” for me as safety does for many others.

I was running for my life and my mother was standing in the doorway of our mobile home with a sinister grin on her face. I was running hard but I could not cover any ground because my feet were not moving. Shattered glass pieces of the window she had just broken were strewn around on the floor. Her hand was bleeding as she clutched a large jagged piece of glass.

My eyes opened and every muscle was tense in my body. I lay flat on my back in my own bed. I was cold and the moisture from my perspiration made the sheets stick to my body. It was so real though…I was paralyzed with fear. I wanted to leave the house and go to my grandmother’s but I could potentially run into my mother on the way out. I could here her footsteps in the hallway stop outside of my closed bedroom door. My heart was racing and I felt as though I would rather be dead than where I was at that given moment in time. It felt as though the world has stopped spinning and it was all created by my subconscious mind.

I miss my "Sticky" dog. She passed away last April.

Why do hearts have to break?

She was 13 years old, and boy was she cranky. She adored me though. Anyone else she would nash her teeth and grumble from down deep inside. She saw me through my addiction and my recovery. No matter what... her feelings for me were rock solid, and no matter what...she never changed her mind about me. The incredible amount of sadness and tears remind me of the price of love...although the price was high, it was the bargain of a lifetime.

-DH

The smallest gestures in life touch my heart the most. Reliving the horrors of my past and losing everything...(my job, my home, my husband)...I went through a nasty seperation. I had a two dollar bill, my little dog, an old truck (that had a locked gas cap, no key, and no gas in the tank). I never wanted to spend the two dollar bill. Needless to say, I spent the two dollars.
As I relived the memories with my current husband he listened quietly and gave me a hug. The next day as I cleaned off my desk, I found an envelope with my name on it. Inside was a card and a two dollar bill. The note said "I want you to have your two dollar bill. I love you."

A cold and rainy day is a beautiful thing...It appeals to all of my senses at the same time. I see it fall from the sky, hear it hitting the ground, feel it on my skin, smell it in the air, stick out my tongue to taste the rain as it falls. It washes away and allows for new growth. It supports the past, present, and future in one simple act. Magical...