addiction – it is making me

memento mori

For years, I was disturbed by my brother’s obsession with skulls. He put skull stickers on his drums, incorporated skulls into his tattoos and clothing, even decorated with skulls. From my perspective at the time, he was flirting with a dark, dangerous part of life; maybe even glorifying evil.

A few years ago, I jumped on the Lenten bandwagon of the memento mori movement, which was an ancient monastic practice reframed and repopularized by Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP. Memento mori, Latin for “remember your death”, is an ancient practice of prayer — the reality of death ever before us illuminates our everyday actions in the context of eternity. One day we shall die—that is an inevitability. What do we do with this time? With our daily actions? The thought is sobering. But, rightly presented and understood, it is surprisingly not morbid.

It suddenly occurred to me that my brother might not be crazy. In fact, considering all he’s been through in his life, it made a whole lot of sense. My brother was a drug addict for years and I know came very close to death more than once; he also lost friends along the way to drugs. He now lives as though his life is a miraculous gift—because it is. I wonder if skulls are a reminder to him of his own mortality, something he’s probably been more aware of than I have of my own.

I bought a ceramic skull for our altar. During Lent, it sits below our icons. It weirded my kids out the first year, which made me even more glad it was there. Death is unsettling. Having been created in the image of God, death was not what we were intended to endure. But now, because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, we look forward to the Resurrection: death is a passage.

For school, my daughter and I have been reading aloud together Everyman, a short play from the 16th century written by an unknown cleric about a man journeying towards death. He is abandoned first by Fellowship and Kinsmen, and gradually by everyone and everything he depended upon in life; towards the end he is abandoned even by Beauty and Wits. The man begs to be accompanied, but is repeatedly reminded he will ultimately meet death alone—save for Angel, who meets him with this greeting: “Come excellent elect spouse to Jesu: Hereabove thou shalt go/…/Now shalt thou into the heavenly sphere,/ Unto the which all ye shall come / That liveth well before the day of doom.”

Sometimes in our society today with so many distractions it’s hard to practice memento mori. But this year, with the threat of the coronavirus touching every part of life, it’s very real. People respond to this fear in different ways (some people hoard toilet paper, for example). In Oregon right now, we’re in a mandated lockdown; we’re only allowed to leave our homes for necessary outings. The fear of death has trickled into every corner of life. Yet, death is always here with us, even in times without pandemics. Maybe a hidden blessing in times like this is that we see for ourselves that the chasm that separates us from death is paper-thin. Life is a beautiful gift: yes, fight to live, protect life, celebrate and nurture it. But death, though ugly and terrible, need not be feared; it’s already been defeated. Through death, our life is illuminated. To see it before us is a more true way of living.

my sister

Today is my sister’s birthday; she’s 48 years old. I can’t send her a birthday card because she doesn’t have an address. I can’t call her because she doesn’t have a phone. I can’t visit her because I don’t know where she is. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen her. She’s not dead, she’s just gone. It’s an existence stranger than death, a ghost-like existence. There have been sightings from family and friends, people who think they’ve seen her, or who have actually spoken with her. My dad drives a school bus, and on a few occasions he thinks he sees her on the street during one of his routes; he’ll drive back to that spot after work only to find she’s not there. Maybe she wasn’t ever there in the first place. Maybe he just thinks he sees her out of that steadfast spark of hope in the back of his mind.

I saw my dad today, but I didn’t mention it. I kind of hope his terrible birth-date memory for all of us four kids might be a grace on this occasion. When I saw my mom she said, “Do you know what today is?” I know this is her awkward way of talking about my sister without talking about my sister. Of course I remember my sister’s birthday. Growing up, we often celebrated our birthdays together because it’s just a few days after mine. We’re ten years apart, but she was always game for fun and didn’t mind having a CareBear cake one year, or a MyLittlePony cake another year. She was vivacious and loved with a generous heart. (I write more about her here.)

My sister is selectively homeless. She might not look at it that way, but there were many open doors to her—all with the condition of going through recovery and staying clean. She wanted her independence, or her independence as she saw it. She reached out to my parents a couple times, asked for a warm sleeping bag, things like that, but eventually she cut off all contact.

This year I’m feeling pretty sad. I think the first few years—maybe like the grieving process—I didn’t feel too sad. At first it was like she’d slammed a door in everyone’s faces and I just yelled back a petulant fine-be-that-way. Then I tried joking about it. Then I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me. All the while I’ve also been telling myself I shouldn’t feel this strongly about it. She’s only my half-sister, or I can’t possibly feel as badly as my dad or her son, or I haven’t been close to her in a long time. All those things are true, but they don’t change my love and concern for her, nor do they change the pain of separation.

Today is my sister’s birthday and I wish I could see her. Even if it would be awkward and uncomfortable. I wish I could send her an inappropriately funny birthday card, the kind she would love. A birthday celebrates someone’s life, and I want her to know she’s loved and her life is important. In the struggle and confusion of dealing with addiction, I don’t know that I always showed her that. I cling to the mystery of God’s timing, the power of healing at work that I can’t see, the mystical body of Christ praying for her and others like her. God’s mercy is endless– both for me in the ways I have fallen short in loving her, and for all that weighs on her heart.

totus tuus: day 10

mercy, and the prodigal son

I’ve heard a lot of memorable sermons on the Prodigal Son parable: that the father willingly gives the son his inheritance in the first place, or the fact that the son ends up with the swine indicates he’s in a foreign, non-Jewish place, or that the father recognizes him from far away and runs to meet him. All great.

But I’ve always had a difficult time with this parable because I strongly identify with the elder son who feels jilted. In my own family, we had a real-life prodigal son. My brother left us through addiction—he was still physically present, but his true self was chained up and slowly silenced by drugs. It was a roller coaster of emotions and events, and none of us handled it well for the first several years; we wanted him to take responsibility, but the rest of us didn’t know we had stuff of our own to deal with in the mess. I say “we”, but I felt alone. I think my parents saw it as their problem to deal with, and out of love and concern for me, didn’t want to include me. But what they didn’t realize until later is that I was already very much involved—entwined would be a better word—with the behavior of addiction. But I’m sure my mom felt alone, and I’m sure my dad felt alone, and I’m sure my brother felt alone (otherwise he wouldn’t have used, right?). So there we were, all living in the same house, feeling alone and isolated. Addiction does that; it’s a thing.

Even before my brother’s addiction, I’d been the easier kid. I took great pride in pleasing my parents, which doesn’t mean I never wronged them—I certainly did, and experienced deep shame and self-loathing when I did. What I didn’t realize until much later was how much of my identity I’d wrapped up in making people happy, whatever the cost. Then life shifted, my conversion began, I wanted to be Catholic—and suddenly, I wasn’t the perfect daughter anymore. I saw my parents as worried, distressed, perplexed, and disappointed. My identity within my family went belly-up. The night I was baptized, my parents sat in the back of the church, probably feeling like fish out of water. I was thankful they came, but it was awkward—they were uncomfortable, I was overjoyed.

Years later, my brother got clean and was baptized. The whole family of non-baptizing Quakers came to witness his baptism. There was joy and excitement. I was excited for him too, but I had to fight back a building resentment. In our family, my baptism was treated as a rite of dissent, a flood that formed a canyon between us, whereas my brother’s baptism was a triumphal entry. I was so proud of him, but I was also jealous that they were prepared to kill the fatted calf for him. On top of that was a layer of guilt for even feeling jealous—my brother was dead, and had come back to life!

So this parable makes me ask myself: was I obedient to my parents out of love, fear, or obligation? For me, obedience was tightly wound with my vanity because it was all about how I was perceived, not what was true and real, much like the elder son in the prodigal parable. So when another child was shown mercy and love, jealousy reared its ugly head and exposed my lack of love. There is an honesty and humility in the prodigal son, which the elder does not yet possess. If I had obeyed out of love, and had been more aware of how much mercy I’d received in my own life, I would have selflessly rejoiced that day with my family and not simmered in my own fear of rejection. Alas, I’m not perfect, no surprise there. So yeah, I get why the elder son was perturbed. And I also get why he was mistaken.

But it’s given me a lot to think about how I relate to God, my Father. Do I obey out of fear or out of love? It was one of the things on my short, but pointed list I wanted to really examine during these 33 days of consecration, and now we’ve come to it. Several days back I was supposed to contemplate God the Father and I struggled with that. The image in my mind of Jesus is pretty clear and distinct, but God the Father shifts and morphs depending on how I’m feeling. If I’m feeling guilty, God is a wrathful, fearful being from whom I want to hide. If I’m feeling good, He’s this beautiful Creator encompassing me with His wings. I want to bridge these two images, because a true father is both— tenderly showing the way with unwavering truth and unfathomable mercy.

Also… I forget that I’m the prodigal son, too. In my pride, I don’t want to admit that I’ve chosen to starve with the swine at times in my life. When I sin—which is a way of seeking meaning and purpose outside of God’s kingdom—and go to Confession, I am returning to the Father’s house in repentance, in the light of God’s mercy and love. I hear the voice of the elder son telling me that I’m not worthy of the Father’s mercy, not worthy of the Eucharistic feast He’s set before me. But God says I am.

In True Devotion, St. Louis de Montfort points out that scrupulosity or “servile fear” cramp, imprison, and confuse the soul. To this I can say, amen amen. One trait in St. Thérèse of Liseiux that I admire is her confidence in God’s mercy, which in action translates to a humility about her imperfections. I admire it precisely because I find that so difficult. To do that, God has to be seen as a tender, merciful Father, who waits for the prodigal to return and goes to great lengths—death, for instance—to be reunited.

my meet-cute with the Divine Mercy

In October of 2013, my husband and I were living north of Boston, and on a whim one Saturday morning we decided to drive with our four kids across the state of Massachusetts to Stockbridge to visit the National Shrine of Divine Mercy. It wasn’t entirely random; I’d been really wanting to go—St. Faustina was the first saint I loved and had taken as patroness at my baptism and confirmation (along with St. Thérèse of Lisieux). It was also the 75th anniversary of her death, so there would be an especially large gathering at the Shrine.

It was a beautiful drive, just as one would expect in New England in the fall; the trees that lined the turnpike were red and golden-hued, the air was crisp, the sky was clear. My heart was full as our little family prayed the chaplet on the lawn. As I looked around at all the people gathered there, humbled by the multiple priests hearing Confessions and the lines that trailed behind them, I was moved, but also amused by God’s leading in my life. I first encountered St. Faustina right at the dawn of my awakening to Catholicism, and she walked quietly alongside me up to my baptism a few years later. At that time, I had no idea of the impact the message of Divine Mercy had made on the world, only what an impact it had made on my own life.

I first heard of St. Faustina in the basement of my boyfriend’s house when I was around 16 years old. At the time I would often walk to his house after school. We’d do some homework, then “watch a movie” in his basement (code for “make-out”). On that particular day, his mom had borrowed a movie from their church library and was very excited about it. I don’t know why I was willing to watch this obviously religious video; maybe because I was trying to be nice, acquiescing to her earnest recommendation of this B-quality documentary. Or maybe she knew our code language (it wasn’t altogether clever). But I actually did watch this movie. It was about a simple, Polish nun named Sister Maria Faustina who had received a message from Our Lord, a message of mercy for the whole world at a time when the evils that preceded World War II had already been unleashed, unbeknownst to her. Normally a skeptic of anything Catholic, I was moved by her life, by her suffering and humility, by her solitude and contemplation, by how much Jesus clearly loved her. I wanted that. And that image of Jesus… He is touching his heart, from which two streams flow: one red, one white— blood and water— just as it was at the crucifixion when his side was pierced. Underneath this gentle and heroic Christ is written the words: Jesus, I trust in You.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the Divine Mercy. Like the image of the Sacred Heart, it had found a foothold in my entire being. I typed “Divine Mercy chaplet” into the search engine on our computer at home. It was an accessible prayer—an appeal to God’s mercy by the suffering of His son, for the salvation of the world. There was also something about the recalling of His “sorrowful Passion” and the meditation on His suffering that appealed to me. I prayed the chaplet in secret every so often, and increasingly more as I grew closer to Our Lord and the Church.

At the time, I really needed not just the message of Divine Mercy, but the image too. Home life had become increasingly stressful as addiction reared its ugly head and demanded the full attention of us all. I needed to see that look of tenderness from Our Lord, and to remember that He poured Himself out for love of me. I needed to call out for mercy as an intercession for my family, but also for myself in the midst of what seemed hopeless; I needed that mantra of Jesus, I trust in You, when there was no clear path forward.

The Divine Mercy message, chaplet, image, and the holy example of St. Faustina herself would become a staple in my spiritual life: in my struggles with anxiety and scrupulosity, in prayer for loved ones struggling with addiction and other over-powering difficulties, and in just remembering Christ’s mercy for me in my own continual struggle with sin. God knows I wasn’t looking for it, and certainly not where I encountered it, but how sorely I needed it.

At the National Shrine of Divine Mercy, there are life-size sculptures for each station in the Stations of the Cross.

To learn more about St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy message, visit here. For more information about the National Shrine, visit here.

drugs, the de-humanizer

There’s an old home video I like to watch from when I was around two years old. My dad had just bought a video camera—a technical monstrosity with a blinding lamp—and was Memorex-ing the whole of Christmas. In the video, my aunts and uncles are sitting on orange velour couches, while the litter of cousins enter and exit randomly. One of my uncles is doing a Dolly Parton impression with balloons stuffed up his shirt, after which my dad’s other siblings try to top it with their own joke or impression. They’re all making fun of each other, vying for attention, laughing. Like all families, this is certainly part of the story, but not all of it. No one records the ugly stuff—who wants to relive that?

By the time I was an adolescent, I was aware that a lot of my family were drug-users. But it wasn’t really called “addiction”, it was more like uncle-so-and-so just can’t get his act together. My siblings and I thought our family was pretty amusing, actually. They had become caricatures to us: the uncles who couldn’t keep still, their cigarettes bobbing like teeter-totters between their fingers, dropping ashes on the carpet; the cousin who lives as a purposeful transient with his dog, waxing philosophical, and sharing the augmentation of his thoughts by psychedelic shrooms; the aunt who moves like honey and touches her nose to mine to tell me all about my zodiac that month. It all sounds like great material for a novel, these portraits of pitiable, but amusing characters. We loved them, and laughed at them.

One uncle in particular was the most advanced as a caricature in my mind; he was also the most far-gone. Years of heroin, followed by years of state-funded methadone, had reduced him to a shadow of a person. He babbled nonsense and had black gaps in his mouth from decay. We saw him less frequently as time went on. I remember the last time I saw him; I remember his profile as he chatted with my great-aunt, who, though thirty or so years his senior, looked the same age.

The next time I thought about him was when we found out he had collapsed and been taken to the hospital. Dirty heroin had caused an infection in his body, and after decades of abuse, his organs began to fail. At the age of 44, his body shut down, swelled up, and was nearly unrecognizable before he died. My grandmother, who was in denial about the rampant drug-use throughout the family, did not want drugs to be at all mentioned in the cause for death. But we all knew drugs had killed him, slowly over decades.

It all happened in one night—the call, the hospital, his death—then I went to school the next day. There was no mourning. When someone like that dies slowly over time, you grieve them in pieces. When you first realize they’re using and don’t want help, you grieve. When they choose drugs over their spouse and children, you grieve. When you realize they can’t keep a job and won’t be able to take care of themselves, you grieve. Every time you see them slip into greater despair, you grieve. Simultaneously, you learn how to let go, or you go mad.

His memorial service was a strange event; I don’t remember drugs being mentioned at all. There was a brief obituary, then we all sat in silence while Norman Greenbaum’s rock classic “Spirit in the Sky” played over the speakers. In the foyer, someone had put together a photo collage with pictures I had never seen before of an uncle I didn’t recognize. He was striking with dark hair, strumming a guitar. That day I learned he had been a musician, an actor, and an athlete. This caricature of a person became more real to me at his passing. He became a man with a past, someone who had once lived a real life with aspirations and love. I wondered how he could have become a shell of that man.

Like many families, the cycle of addiction continued with mine into the next generation. One who has been tragically affected is my sister. Another reason I like to watch and re-watch the home-video I mentioned earlier is because my sister, always one who loved attention, is in a lot of it. That is the sister I remember: spunky, fun, giggly, sassy, energetic; she was my playmate, even though she was ten years my senior. Like our uncle who passed away, she is now a shell of that person. I do not recognize her.

The tragedy is that drugs do make people into caricatures of the drug they use. The old adage “you are what you eat” works quite well with addiction; in this case, the user becomes the substance. Meth users, heroin users, coke users, abusers of prescription meds—each has a personality of sorts as the real person slowly slips away. No one uses drugs to purposely mess up their lives, rather they use to dull a pain or to drown out lies of inadequacy. Sadly, the drug or alcohol just confirms the fear of not being enough, of not having what it takes, of being unloved. Spiritual and physical sustenance becomes secondary; shit becomes primary. Everyone who really loves them becomes an enemy outsider. The devil must just love it.

I didn’t know my uncle when he was a handsome, talented young man. I don’t remember his years as a husband or a father. I didn’t have to mourn the loss of him in that way, though as a teenager I was very struck by his sudden and tragic death. But I am in the process of grieving the loss of my sister. I don’t know if we’ll ever get her back. Out of my own despair and anger, I have been tempted to caricaturize her, to make light of her, to scorn all her selfish choices. But that’s the work of the drug, to dehumanize her, and I can’t give in to that.

In my better moments, I cling to Scripture passages about hope, about leaning not on our own understanding, but on the delicate and powerful workings of the Holy Spirit. My hope and prayer is that she will one day hear God calling her by name, out of despair and darkness. I want Jesus to break through to her, to appear before her like He did to St. Paul, blind her with His light and heal her with His love. But as far as I know, He could be trying this every day. After years of dealing with addiction in my family, then learning through Al-Anon and its affiliated literature, I know it’s not simple. God doesn’t force grace upon us; we must cooperate, ask and receive. I know He loves her more than me, more than my blesséd parents who hope, pray, and wait, who search for her like a lost sheep. And perhaps God did do this with my uncle, in those last hours so close to death; as the world watched him in a sleeping silence, perhaps God was bursting through with a healing balm of love and mercy, and he was finally desperate enough to whisper his fiat, his yes to God. I guess that’s why we pray continually, for the mercy of just such a moment.