Today is the day I get on my soap box each year and make a statement to whoever may be reading or listening about the fate of my youngest sister. Our Full-Time RV lifestyle enables me to reach even more people that I ever would have had we stayed in Williams and didn’t travel, getting to know so many people. Hers is a story of incredible artistic talent and the genetic predisposition to addiction that seems to accompany the talent in many artists.
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Susan about 3 years before she died[/caption]Three years ago, today she died of a drug overdose, alone in her apartment. It would be another 24 hours before she was discovered and about 36 hours before I got a phone call during my 50th birthday party. I spent my 50th birthday a couple of days later that year making arrangements and trying to console my inconsolable mother. I would write and deliver her eulogy a few weeks later when we buried her ashes in the Elkhart Cemetary. I had a small bit of her placed in a sterling silver and tourquise heart that stays with my in my motor home.
My message is simple, addicts feel alone as a result of the behaviors and choices. People who love them watch in dismay as they slowly self-destruct. I took my turn as many others who loved her trying to help her, not only by giving her money and a place to live many times. Caring for her son, who committed suicide at age 19, I believe as a direct result of his inability to find is way out of the life she forced him to live most of his young life, in the shadow and wreckage of her addict life. The last few years of her life I was angry as hell at her for her continued choices and seeming inability to recover for any length of time. But…. I NEVER STOPPED LOVING HER OR BELIEVING SHE HAD IT IN HER TO RECOVER! That is the message.
I shout this from the rooftops hoping that maybe there is someone in my path who is battling an addiction and woke up today, weary and not wanting to stay the path because it’s hard and they don’t thing anyone cares. I say to you ‘You are wrong!” People care, and they want you to succeed. There are many people in my life who I love deeply who fight this fight everyday with varying degrees of triumph. Keep fighting. As I always say to people who come to me for support “Stay on the high road, the view is much better from up there!” This is where the inspiration for the name of this blog comes from.
Addiction isn’t just illegal drugs, it comes in the form of food addictions, cigarettes, alcohol and yes, abusive relationships as I experienced personally in my young adult life. You are good enough to have a better life. Say it out loud to yourself every day and find whatever it takes to see your way out. If you don’t you will surely succumb to the demon one day.
I don’t know if Susan’s overdoes was intentional, or accidental but the end result was the same. She died at her own hand, far too young and took with her, an amazing talent and beautiful soul. She is a part of me and I believe I will find her again someday in another life. In the meantime, her presence visits me from time to time and sets my heart at ease, knowing that she is finally free, just not in the way I had hoped for. It still hurts like hell to know I will never celebrate a birthday with both of my sisters the way we used too, since our dates were so close together in the summer.
I’m a deep believer in life after this life and stay alert for signs. My sign today was when I was sitting in the car after my Facebook Live Stream this morning crying uncontrollably, the Peter Gabriel song “Don’t Give Up” came on. It was a sign from her I know. If only she could have taken that advice while she was here with us.
Until tomorrow...
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