My Story: Part II

**This portion of My Story has been co-authored by my mother, Kathy, and is told from her perspective.**


II

Twice in my life I have known the meaning of the word “surreal.” The first instance came during the heart-wrenching months that followed after learning my mother was dying of colon cancer. The second was receiving a call from my daughter in a drug rehabilitation clinic in Las Vegas, Nevada. On both occasions, I felt as though I had stepped outside of myself. It was like watching myself in an old silent movie; I was the actor, but the circumstances and feelings were not mine. The thing about these surreal moments is that I never had any warning that they were coming. There was no time to prepare, mentally or physically. There was no “transition” period, wherein I could adjust to my new out-of-body existence. During both of these periods of my life I had no control over the events that were so rapidly unfolding. Instead, I was swept up in their tide without any say to the matter, forced to hold on for dear life to any sense of normalcy or stability I could find.

The call from my daughter, my only child, came just after dinner time in September of 2004. The caller identification displayed “Clark County Rehabilitation.” I lifted the receiver to my ear and heard my daughter weeping. “Mom? I, I can’t stay here-I’m scared!” A wave of nausea swept over my body and for a moment I thought I might faint, as I realized that what Misty had confessed to me in an email earlier in the week was disastrously true; she was horribly addicted to prescription pain medication.

Answering that call forced me to travel down a dark road I never wanted to travel down. I was completely ill-prepared for this journey. Drug addiction? What do I do? How do I help her? Why did she do this? Should I have known? When children are born, they do not come with a manual, but you believe in your heart that if you raise your child in church and teach them to have high moral standards, these types of things won’t happen. It’s such a false sense of security we, as parents, give ourselves. It’s a false, candy-coated faith that we allow to seep into our souls, believing that hard times do not befall “good Christians.” We so incorrectly assume that a proper upbringing will shield our children from struggle and temptation that we fail to prepare them for it. But then again, how do you prepare a child for drug addiction?

Not us. This wasn’t happening to us. Not to our perfect little family. We were Southern Baptists for goodness sake! Misty was in church practically from inception. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday night, Wednesday night, fellowship dinners, youth camps and revivals-we were always there. Misty was baptized in the second grade and even wanted to be a missionary when she grew up. And she wasn’t a problem child either. She was sarcastic, but what kid wasn’t? Even as a teenager she was never in any kind of remarkable trouble. Good grades, involved with extracurricular activities at school, lots of friends. Once she even called us to come pick her up from a sleep-over at a friend’s house because they had beer in the refrigerator! When she graduated high school, she wanted to go to college and teach dance.

And now she was a junkie. What a loss of innocence. What a loss of intelligence. What a loss of time. What a life-changing, world-altering phone call.

That call couldn’t have come at a worse time if it had looked back on the history of our lives and hand-picked it. We’d moved from our sweet home Alabama to Brunswick, Georgia and finally to Mechanicsville, Maryland; two towns that I am certain were completely inhabited by aliens. We’d never felt so out of place in our lives. It was like wearing two left shoes. Additionally, it was during this time that I watched my mother die of cancer. It was the hardest thing I’d done. Daddy had promised her he wouldn’t put her in a nursing home and we made sure it never happened. It involved much sacrifice, emotionally, physically, completely. Her cancer killed parts of my spirit along with her body. For eight months I watched the woman that raised me, that I loved beyond measure, that I was certain I couldn’t live without, slip right out of my life forever. My heart ached so bad it physically hurt. I drove to Virginia every two weeks to help Daddy care for Mama. In the early months, I sat by her bed with pen and paper and recorded her last wishes. “Give my clothes to Lisa because they’ll fit her. I want my things out of the house as soon as the funeral is over. I don’t want them to cause your daddy more grief.”

It was during the early months of Mama’s illness that Misty decided to move to Las Vegas. Mama wanted me to go back home to Georgia to say goodbye, but there was no one to fill in for me if I left, and by that point, Daddy couldn’t care for her on his own. I had no choice but to stay. I told Mama it was okay, I really didn’t want to go anyhow. That might have been the only time in my life I ever lied to her. I desperately wanted to go home and see my baby girl off. I needed to say goodbye and I wanted to be there for her daddy because I knew his heart was breaking. And if I could have just been there, maybe I could’ve talked her out of what seemed like such an obvious bad decision. Nevertheless, I stayed by Mama’s side and my husband Gordy drove Misty to the airport alone and watched his little girl run as fast as she could toward her ultimate demise.

Surreal. I knew what that word meant. It meant your body and brain were going through the motions, but your mind had turned off. It meant no emotion, only action. It meant crisis mode.