EULOGY

     We began to accept that Mike was close. Days, maybe weeks. It made things easier. A sense of peace and acceptance soothed the household. Then the phone rang. My sister screaming, hysterical.

     "Brian died. He's dead he's dead he's dead."

     My 23-year-old nephew left a rehab center and within 48 hours had died in a motel room of a heroin overdose. His girlfriend survived and would face amputation of her legs due to gangrene. It was all anguish and pain and loss as our worst fears were realized and he was just gone just like that.

     Plans changed. Private, family-only services. No services. Rush the services. Wait on the services. Happily, if there is happy here, his parents decided to have a wake and church funeral. Brian's brother was on a ship in the Navy. The armed services are remarkably accommodating in such matters, and he was transported around the globe in 24 hours.

     A former in-law, separated from the family by divorce but never by fact, heard of our plight and drove down to stay with Mike and Jerry the week of Brian's death. This allowed me to spend much of the week with my brother and his wife; the Navy son; and the twin son and daughter, now high school freshmen. We cooked and cleaned and tried to stay out of the way and didn't. When summoned to a tragedy, you just show up and trust you'll figure out what to do when you get there.

     I was asked to write and deliver the eulogy.

     Of course, of course.

     My regret for making this promise was profound. Brian and I hadn't been close. I had taken every opportunity to tell him to get sober and he had never shown much interest in me or in the message. We hadn't talked much lately. My first thought was a grotesque vision of Al Pacino's Scarface.

     "I try to tell you, but you dinna' fucking listen! Well, look at you now, huh?"

     Someone else should do this.

     Isn't there a service, I wondered,  a generic eulogy one can click onto, like on-line test cheating services. I wanted a form into which I could insert a name. The thought of reading something at the funeral didn't scare me. The though of saying something did.

     Should I talk about what a great guy he was? And watch as eyes roll?Everyone would know the story. Active addicts are not wonderful people.

     I could go back to his youth. He was a nice, fun kid. One of the oldest of his generation in my family, he was the ringleader, the entertainer, always making sure the little ones were included in the fun.

     Then what? Just waltz past the awful truth and ask God's blessing on this day of sorrow? Sounded reasonable. 

     What do I say to his parents? Certainly my brother had asked me to handle this due to my own experience in recovery. He and his wife had tried it all, cribbed from their library of self-help books and their foray into recovery groups for friends and loved ones of addicts. Tough Love. Unconditional Love. They had heaped Love on Brian forever. If they could have saved him, he would have been saved. They had left no stone unturned, no dollar unspent, no tear unshed. 

     It was into this pew I knew I could not look. I had told them for years to get tough. Quit cleaning up his mess. He'll learn if he has to. They got tough. And now this, a brutal end to an impossible existence chained to a man intent on converting your love for him into cash so he could do his thing while you raise his baby. You wish he'd die and get it over with and he does and you have to live with that. You scream and pay and chase and pray and one day watch a purple corpse being carried out of a motel room as a cop puts a hand on your shoulder and says, Sorry.

     And now I would say what?

     "Damn. It usually works."

  *******

     The wake was a crowded, overflowing affair. The old outlive their mourners. So much regret. Brian's friends looked like him. Outrageous hair, metal piercings, tatoos, rings that stretch the earlobe, Insane Clown Posse t-shirts. Most hadn't had much contact with him for 18 months. Some couldn't bear to witness his destruction. Others had tried to stay close and were rebuffed, ignored. Dope is a jealous mistress. Toward the end it had just been Brian and his girlfriend and and the heroin.

     I listened closely to his Mom, my sister-in-law. I would let her tell me what to say.

     "It was so bad we forget the guy inside all of it. The sweet guy. I saw him hold his son and I was so sure he had changed. He had his baby, and I had mine, again."

     Brian's son had arrived last year and inspired Brian to enter rehab. The more recent attempt was Brian's second. He knew he needed help if he was to be a good father.  

     His Mom remembered a kid with a left-handed brain who put puzzles together upside down, using the shapes of the pieces without the pictures. Doing it right-side up was boring. She remembered him driving hours through a snowstorm when a buddy got stuck in a snowbank. A loyal friend. She remembered as only a mother can remember.   

     I used this for the eulogy. They did love him the best they knew how. The rest was up to him, a once-beautiful boy with love enough for everyone but himself.

     I praised the sunshine of his youth, his loyal friends who stuck close to his Mom and Dad even as he disappeared. I talked about healing. Few pressures  strain the bonds of matrimony as much as a wayward child.

     I suggested if anyone shared his passion for dope, they may wish to reconsider the trajectory of their lives, that by living, perhaps, they could carry the light Brian once carried, and let his light shine through them.

     I talked about his pain, which was acute. I cribbed from the A.A. Big Book about the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization he suffered as his recent attempts at rehab fell short. I talked about soul sickness. I paraphrased Revelations.

     And God will be with him. And He will wipe away all tears from his eyes. And there will be no more death. And there will be no more grief or crying or pain. For this life has passed away.

     "Let us leave our fear and pain in this church, for there is no more to fear for him, and he is now beyond pain. Let us carry only our love for this beautiful boy, and remember his love for us."

  *******

      We returned home to Mike and Jerry numb and empty. I had just reached a point of acceptance for Mike's impending end when Brian had pulled me away. Mike looked different, his eyes staring far away into a foggy distance. His arms lifted, spastic, up and down.

     "Sorry, Mike. Not tonight."

     I went to bed.      

      His kidneys were failing. Poisons in his bloodstream were killing him quite naturally. Adele and I had made a promise to each other that when the time came we would let him go.

     We broke the promise the next day and sent him to the hospital, where they flushed him out and extended his life two more weeks, when we could be ready for its end.