Thanks Heroin

It was supposed to rain, but the only water we felt were the tears streaming down our faces.

Not a single blade of grass moved, everything stood still; it was like there was no air.

It was so hot, as if the sun was standing right there with us.

I remember driving by this very cemetery with him when we first met and he said that’s where he would be buried, the NH Veteran’s Cemetery. But I never thought I would be doing that very thing three days before our daughter’s tenth birthday. I never really thought the drugs would take him.

It was a phone call I have feared for a long time. I woke up to missed calls and messages from his sister and niece. Something was wrong, they never called, and certainly not with this much urgency. Groggy, I called his sister back and heard the words I had feared since I left him four years ‘He OD’d this morning’ not believing what I knew to be true, I said, ‘So he is in the hospital right?’ Those words I never wanted to hear came through the phone like a dagger to my heart, ‘He’s dead.’

How am I going to tell her? How am I going to tell my daughter her dad is gone, forever? I don’t even know the last time they talked, or texted or what was said.

I left my room to go and tell her. She was sitting on the couch with her laptop and smiled at me then made some goofy faces. I let her finish her lunch before I brought her to my bedroom. Just eight months prior I sat her in the same spot and had to tell her that her Mimi, who had been sick with cancer, who she sat bedside with at the end and held her hand, had died. I remember how she had cried. I knew this was going to be so much worse.

I just had to tell her. ‘You know how your dad takes drugs? He took too much and they stopped his heart.’ I could not bring myself to say, ‘Your dad died.’

I just held her while we both cried. I held her, and told her that I never wanted to have to tell her that.

On a blazing hot day in that cemetery I never thought I would be standing in, my daughter had to say good-bye to her dad for the last time. A gold box sat on a table flanked with two members of the Army and a single bouquet of flowers. Three folded flags accompanied the remains of my daughter’s dad.

Tears fell like the rain we had expected as my daughter was presented with a flag in honor of her dad.

She is left with only memories and a final text that reads, ‘Love you’.