Mother’s Never Get a Choice

I gave the baby a bath the night before, because I wanted him to smell fresh and clean when Anthony came home. He’d worked the day before, and then golfed with a close friend, another addict, who was also well into his recovery. He didn’t mention to me that said friend would be coming back to our new house with him that evening; not even when I asked if I could please just drop everything at 7pm and drive to Olympia so we could spend the night together. We’d been spending so many nights apart, ever since he took his new job working as a Journeyman-level plumber in Olympia. I’d begged him not to take it. The job paid four times what his Seattle job was giving him and he told me it seemed like a no-brainer, but not to me. I was worried about things like the long commute, the added stress and time away from me and our newborn son. “You can work later!” I pleaded, “Your son is only this small once.” At my request my husband prayed about it for two days and then told me solemnly “I’ve prayed about it. God said I ‘can’t work later. I need to do this now’.” I had no idea how literal his words would turn out to be. He’d worked hard, saved every dime and bought us a modest “fixer-uper,” not far from his jobsite in Olympia. It was our first house. By the time we closed on the house he was commuting to Bremerton, to a new jobsite and I wasn’t seeing very much of him. I was busy with homeschooling our three older kids from my first marriage, caring for our new baby and preparing for the upcoming move into our new home. I treasured our time together when we got it. There was nothing quite like being in my husband’s strong arms. I just seen him two days before, when we’d spent the night at my parents house, but I craved to be in his arms, I missed him so much! Anthony told me it was getting late and would be a “waste of gas,” for me to come down that night. He promised that he’d go to church with my mom in the morning, get set-up with pastor Jeff for mentoring (a critically important thing for addicts to take care of when they move to a new location) and then he’d drive up to our apartment in Redmond to help me pack. Moving day was only weeks away! I didn’t like it, but I honored his decision. When I awoke the next morning I felt anxious. Like when he suddenly went missing during a relapse. There was something in his voice on the phone the night before that I could not pin point. I wouldn’t feel right until I’d had a chance to drug test him. Drug tests were part of our life. They gave me peace of mind and kept him accountable. Life with a husband who was an addict, even an addict who loved and served God with all his heart, was often fenced in with this kind of anxiety. I nervously checked the app on my phone, that linked me to his location to provide me some added peace of mind in times like this. I could see he was at our house. I breathed a little easier, but not much. Just before 10am I texted to ask why he wasn’t on his way to Sunday school and he didn’t reply. I made a few calls that went to voicemail, and then I made a few more. I made 27 calls in total because that seemed like a really big and overwhelming number of calls to have been ignored. When he finally showed up I wanted to be able to make a strong case for how upset he had made me. With resentment rising within me I chucked my phone into the sofa and then had a brain wave. “What if something was really wrong with me, or David? What if our child was on the way to the hospital or I was bleeding in a terrible car accident? Let’s see how HE likes it!” I stalked to the kitchen and grabbed a small zippered bag. I put my phone inside and began to try and imagine where I might leave it for the day, hidden at the hospital. He’d be sick with worry when he finally woke up and I didn’t answer. When he checked the app and saw I was at the hospital that would teach him to make me worry! I sighed. I really wanted to teach him a lesson, but I knew this short of underhanded behavior was part of the old life I’d left behind, when Anthony and I had become new creations in Christ. For a moment I considered moving forward with my plan. He’d surely think twice before being so uncaring in the future! But it was no good. I knew it would be outright sin to take matters into my own hands like this. So I took my phone out of the baggie and sent a flurry of texts, where I reminded him that it isn’t like we have a “normal marriage.” For us, him randomly sleeping in on Sunday when we are apart is terrifying to me. I reminded him that when he does this sort of thing, I always mentally have him dead in the bathroom with a needle in his arm. I was right about everything but the needle. When the texts also went ignored I started to feel afraid, so I called my mother-in-law and told her something was not right. She asked if I knew any of the neighbors, and I told her I did have the phone number for one. Diana lived next door and before we even had the keys to the house she had blessed us with an expensive sectional in excellent condition. She was a sweet lady and I didn’t imagine she’d mind knocking on the door to put my mind at ease. I hastily explained Anthony’s background and why I was worried. She walked over to our house, which was right next door and knocked. When he didn’t answer, she rang the bell. When he still didn’t answer I gave her permission to let herself inside. She looked around downstairs and didn’t see him, then she told me he wasn’t in the bedroom. “The bathroom door is shut and he’s not answering my knock” she relayed uncertainly. “Anthony? Are you there? Your wife is on the phone.” There was no answer. She said “I’ll try the knob.” Time slowed down. My breath caught in my throat. After eternity she replied “It’s locked.” “Call 911” I demanded. “I can’t do it because they will connect me to the Redmond dispatch. Call them and tell them there’s an overdose situation behind a locked door. He could be dying in there Diana!” I hung up the phone. I sat on the couch. Frozen. Waiting for her to call me back. Fear within me swelled and launched me back into action. I called my dad. For whatever reason he’d forgotten to turn his ringer off for church. When he answered I told him Anthony was locked in the bathroom at our house and not responding. I was over an hour away and needed him to go over there right now and bust down the door. He left the service immediately, but didn’t beat the paramedics. Diana called back. “They are trying to avoid doing damage to the house and working on looking in the bathroom window” she told me. My eyes bulged in fury. “Tell them to bust the door down. I don’t care. Its a standard hollow core door. How hard is that? He could be dying while they are trying to find a ladder. They need to get in there now.” Diana relayed they had permission from the homeowner to break down the door. Moments later someone official was on the phone. “Ma’am, you son…” I cut her off “He’s my HUSBAND!” She apologized. “Ma’am, I regret to inform you that your husband is deceased. And has been. For quite some time.” When someone tells you the man you loved is dead, the world goes very very quiet, and then suddenly gets very loud as your mind tries to magnify anything it can to drown out the horrible words. “I’m coming” I said. I hung up the phone and sent two text messages. One was to my mother. The other to my closest friend who lived in Spokane. Both texts said the same thing. “He’s dead.” To my friend in Spokane I added a second text. “Please come.” Then I got up, walked to the back bedroom and began packing some things I figured I would need. My vitamins and supplements, a change of clothes, diapers for the baby. Then I walked into the back bedroom, switched my bag to my opposite shoulder, picked up my sleeping infant and carried him to the car. The day was clear and bright. I remember noticing how cheery the morning sunlight felt. It seemed oddly incongruous, for the sun to be shining so brilliantly on the day my world ended. I didn’t speed. I had my baby, Anthony’s baby, in the backseat, and now that child was all I had left of him. I drove carefully in silence. The baby got fussy near Tacoma. It had been several hours since he’d eaten and I knew he’d be famished. I didn’t know if I should stop and feed him or keep going. “I’ll pray he calms down” my friend Shera said through the Bluetooth on my phone. I didn’t even remember calling her. A few whimpers later, he was quiet. My mother-in-law had been calling repeatedly. I could not answer. I could not be the one to tell her the awful news. We were close and I knew from our conversation earlier that she would already be on her way to the house. I was almost halfway there when the calls stopped. I noticed my phone was quiet and my eyes began to fill with tears. Not for myself, because I’d chosen this. I’d known the risks. The Salvation Army statistics were “one in three addicts who entered their program were dead inside of three years, two out of three were dead in ten.” Anthony had graduated from the Salvation Army six month program just over three years before, with honors. How I’d hoped they would be wrong, that he’d be that one Heroin addict who beat the odds. But he hadn’t. He’d died just as Mindy had always feared. Tears began to roll down my face, as I cried for my mother-in-law because today she would say goodbye to her only child, her beloved son, and unlike me… she never had a choice.