My dad called me this afternoon to apologize for not getting my birthday card mailed yesterday. We’ve got a long-standing tradition of giving each other our birthday cards late, but he’s a little later than usual.
His voice cracked when he said “Something happened to [stepmother].” My heart sank, I was imagining a car accident, a heart attack…some horrible accident. No.
“She overdosed yesterday.”
This is a 60 year old woman who has been married to my dad almost 20 years. She’s had the same job for 15 years. She’s got two kids (three if you count me), and nine grand kids. This is a woman who, while she might drive me crazy with her batty personality and strange habits…is pretty settled. I guess this is one of those moments where you have to sit back and realize that there is no one, not one of us, who is immune to depression.
My dad is convinced that it was accidental, and that she emptied her two prescription bottles in an effort to get some “relief” from her “pain.” He said that these scripts were refilled on the 9th of July. So, a little math: 30 pills in each bottle, subtract 17 pills from each bottle, that leaves 13 pills in each bottle. 26 pills. One, her “nerve pill” and the other some sort of pain pill with codeine.
I’m sorry, it doesn’t sound like an accident to me, and my dad is deluding himself.
I’m not angry with her, I know the headspace she had to have been in to do what she did. I’ve been there. I think that’s why I’m so disappointed in her. She was married to my dad when, many years ago, I overdosed. She saw how it crushed my dad. She saw what it did to my family. She lived through it from the “other” side…and she still made the choice to do what she did.
I hurt for my daddy. He’s such a good man, and he’s so tenderhearted. He worries about everything, and he loves his family so much. This has hurt him in ways that my stepmother will never know.
