Part 7
As Aram’s illness progressed, his sense of responsibility diminished. As
he worsened, he no longer paid his bills. I had covered his debts for so long
that I finally realized I just had to quit. His student loan defaulted around the
time he passed away and a woman called demanding payment. I told her of
Aram’s death but I feel that she thought I was lying. She yelled at me and I
screamed back at her. I thought that she didn’t give a rat’s ankle. I finally
had to let my husband handle it. Since Aram died in California, we had not
yet received a death certificate or autopsy report.
We lived in Oklahoma for eight years and Aram graduated from high
school there. He was an excellent athlete, both a varsity wrestler and softball
player. He was so handsome then. A friend from those Oklahoma days
asked me a terrible question, “Did you do anything to help Aram?” I
couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even speak. How could anyone possibly imagine
that I would let my son go through this without attempting to help him? My
God! But you cannot shove beneficial medication down the throat of a 300-
pound man, which is what Aram had ballooned to.
I begged Aram to stop. I pleaded with him. I bribed him. I did all the
things that Al Anon told me not to do. “Let it go,” they would say. “Let go
and let God. Don’t enable him. He has to hit bottom.” When I once told this
to Aram he replied, “Yeah, okay, but did you know that bottom could be
death?” I learned at Al Anon that alcoholism is a two for one disease. It took
me years to learn how to “let go and let God.”
We all grieve as uniquely as we live. The only help we sometimes seem
capable of offering each other is a consoling book. I feel that there is
something beyond this planet. I always had a premonition that Aram would
die young. So he did. I worried, agonized and generally obsessed over him
for most of his 29 years. One day, before he died, he noticed a high school
picture of himself and burst into tears. He saw what he used to be and what
he might have been. He was such a mess at the end. Drugs had badly
damaged his body. The autopsy report stated that he suffered from a dilated
cardiomyopathy and an enlarged liver. He could never have lived pain free
even if he had stopped the drug use. But Aram could not have changed his
ways.
The problem with alcoholism and drug addiction is that there is such a
social stigma attached, particularly with drugs. Heroin killed Aram. There is
no cover up. When one uses heroin, one has hit bottom. Aram knew the
danger, knew that he had a loving family, and knew he was literally killing
me. But he couldn’t stop. This knowledge tormented him. Soon after Aram
died I went to a support group meeting. People went around, introduced
themselves and told how their children had died. I told them truthfully how
Aram had died. I didn’t care. This is insidious. I will not perpetuate the
name of it. Somehow I must have some good come out of Aram’s death. I
am not sure how this is going to happen. I needed that first year just to
survive it. I did survive. It has taken all my strength to survive. There is no
sense to any of this. I must somehow make an impact just talking to people
and helping them.
I lost my father in 1970 and my mother in 1982. They were both
alcoholics, although functioning ones. I never had a close relationship with
my mother. I don’t think about my parents much, really. Their deaths are
something that I have grown accustomed to; I don’t think that they affect me
anymore. But losing Aram is another story. I had determined never to bring
up children in a house with any kind of drug or alcohol abuse. My children
would never live with what I had grown up with. The irony is that I am alive
and my son is dead. This is my own reality. They say that children of
alcoholics become either alcoholics themselves or extremely self-sufficient
people. I am self-sufficient. I learned always to fend for myself. I tried to
invest both of my children with this same self-sufficiency and to keep them
from the kind of life I had lived. Thankfully, my husband did not suffer
from addiction issues.