Speaker 1: This is our American stories. And this next story comes
Speaker 1: from Lily Dan Singer and this piece was originally written
Speaker 1: in Psychology Today for her mother and father.
Speaker 2: I was eight the first time my father and I
Speaker 2: spoke about heroin. He was working on a sculpture, sitting
Speaker 2: cross legged on the floor with his curly hair hanging
Speaker 2: down over his face. I started his bookshelf, perusing the
Speaker 2: thick art volumes.
Speaker 3: Talks.
Speaker 2: Between the pages of one, I found a piece of
Speaker 2: tinfoil folded into a square and marked with small circular burns.
Speaker 2: I'd never seen one like it, but I had a
Speaker 2: hunch this peculiar object had something to do with his
Speaker 2: drug habit.
Speaker 3: I asked, Pop, Uh, what's this?
Speaker 2: He frowned in the same way he would when I
Speaker 2: declined to try out a new drawing technique. But I
Speaker 2: knew I wasn't the source of his disappointment this time.
Speaker 2: Some ten seconds ticked by before he finally answered, that's
Speaker 2: from doing.
Speaker 3: Drugs, but it's from a long time ago. It must
Speaker 3: have gotten lost in that book.
Speaker 2: There was another pause, and guilt must have overcome him,
Speaker 2: because he then confessed that the tinfoil square wasn't actually
Speaker 2: from that long ago, though, he assured me that he
Speaker 2: had stopped using drugs again and was doing better this time.
Speaker 2: Smelling of tobacco and pilaster, he planted a kiss on
Speaker 2: the top of my head and went back to chiseling
Speaker 2: a block of wood. I knew from a young age
Speaker 2: that my parents were heroin addicts. Doesn't take the world's
Speaker 2: smartest kid to figure out the purpose of a methadone clinic,
Speaker 2: or to decipher a loud, tearful arguments about how it's
Speaker 2: time to stop, muffled by only a thin wall when
Speaker 2: you're supposed to be asleep. Growing up where and when
Speaker 2: I did, in New York's East Village in San Francisco's
Speaker 2: Mission District in the early nineties, their predicament was common.
Speaker 2: Plenty of people were slowly kiving in on themselves, their
Speaker 2: skin growing sallow and their eyes becoming vacant as they
Speaker 2: were eaten alive from within by drugs. But despite knowing
Speaker 2: that my parents struggled with addiction, I had only a
Speaker 2: patchy understanding of what that meant, either for them or
Speaker 2: for the hollow eyed strangers on the street and in
Speaker 2: the clinic waiting room. I'd picked up enough for movies
Speaker 2: and foreboding commercials to know that drugs were bad for you,
Speaker 2: But I understood it in the same abstract way I
Speaker 2: knew broccoli.
Speaker 3: Was good for you.
Speaker 2: I couldn't really differentiate between my parents' drug problem and
Speaker 2: all their other grown up problems, like making the rent
Speaker 2: and keeping the house clean. In the years after the
Speaker 2: tinfoil incident, after my parents split up and my mother
Speaker 2: successfully kicked her heroin habit, my father and I had
Speaker 2: an ongoing coded dialogue his efforts to do the same.
Speaker 2: He would tell me that he was healthy, which was
Speaker 2: his way of saying that he was clean. He couldn't
Speaker 2: bring himself to be completely frank about his struggle, but
Speaker 2: he knew that I worried about it, and he wanted.
Speaker 3: To reassure me.
Speaker 2: In fact, he told me how he was doing, no
Speaker 2: matter how euphemistically, made me trust him. It made me
Speaker 2: feel even more invested as I rooted for him from
Speaker 2: the sidelines of this invisible battle. I believed in him
Speaker 2: so intensely that I was probably the only person who
Speaker 2: didn't immediately assume drugs were involved.
Speaker 3: When he died, I.
Speaker 2: Was twelve and living in Upstate New York with my mother,
Speaker 2: He had gone to live in a cabin in the
Speaker 2: northern California Redwoods to be in nature and away from drugs.
Speaker 3: He died in his sleep, even though I was across
Speaker 3: the country. Wouldn't happened. I felt certain that my father
Speaker 3: was clean because of the postcards.
Speaker 2: He'd set me, always mentioning how well he was doing
Speaker 2: and how he couldn't wait for me to visit so
Speaker 2: we could camp out under the ancient majestic trees. The
Speaker 2: autopsy report eventually confirmed that there was no oh heroin
Speaker 2: in my father's blood when he died. The coroner couldn't
Speaker 2: determine a cause of death, which left many open questions.
Speaker 2: But I had the answer to the one question that
Speaker 2: mattered to me. As far as I knew, the only
Speaker 2: way heroin could become fatal was through an overdose, and
Speaker 2: I took the absence of the drug in his system
Speaker 2: to mean that his death was unrelated.
Speaker 3: To his many years of drug abuse. I felt vindicated.
Speaker 2: When I hit my twenties, I realized that I didn't
Speaker 2: actually know that much about my father beyond my rosy memories,
Speaker 2: so I started reaching out to his old friends. The
Speaker 2: hazy view of heroin i'd had as a child became
Speaker 2: sharper and more detailed. I learned that he'd been using
Speaker 2: it with far more regularity and for a longer period
Speaker 2: of time than I'd ever known. I eventually came to
Speaker 2: face the obvious. The damage done by poisoning yourself for
Speaker 2: almost two decades doesn't instantly reverse the moment you stop.
Speaker 2: Forty three year old man's organs don't just shut down inexplicably.
Speaker 2: There may not have been heroin in his system when
Speaker 2: he died, but that didn't mean heroin wasn't.
Speaker 3: The cause of his death. I started to see his
Speaker 3: death not.
Speaker 2: As some freak occurrence, but as something he let happen,
Speaker 2: and I was furious.
Speaker 3: Letting myself rage.
Speaker 2: At him at the memory of him was like releasing
Speaker 2: a breath I'd held for almost twenty years. As a child,
Speaker 2: I'd thought of addiction as a big, bad demon. My
Speaker 2: parents were fighting to escapes that we could all live
Speaker 2: happily ever after. Now I had to wonder how they
Speaker 2: let themselves get into that position in the first place.
Speaker 2: How could they have looked at the peaceful face of
Speaker 2: their sleeping child in one room, then closed the door
Speaker 2: and gotten high in another. My father was a good
Speaker 2: parent in many ways. He read me Grim's fairy tales
Speaker 2: and Greek myths, cherished my every piece of art, and
Speaker 2: encouraged me to voice my thoughts loudly and clearly. But
Speaker 2: all the while he failed his number one duty to
Speaker 2: me to do everything he could to make sure that
Speaker 2: he'd stay in my life. The central requirement of being
Speaker 2: a parent is to be present. All the rest is
Speaker 2: a matter of style and degree.
Speaker 3: You can't be a good.
Speaker 2: Parent, or even a bad parent, if you're not there
Speaker 2: at all. He hadn't really died by accident. I came
Speaker 2: to realize he'd committed a suicide by neglect, like a
Speaker 2: lie of a mission. In a way, feeling my anger
Speaker 2: at him has lessened its power over me. The story
Speaker 2: we often hear about the loved ones of addicts, pat
Speaker 2: tale of anger resolving into forgiveness doesn't acknowledge the complexity
Speaker 2: of feelings layered upon each other, all of them shifting
Speaker 2: continually with time. I don't know if or when I'll
Speaker 2: ever fully forgive my father, but that's okay. Anger hasn't
Speaker 2: diminished my love for him, or my appreciation of everything
Speaker 2: that was wonderful about him. It's just made him feel
Speaker 2: more real. It's let me see him with bracing clarity.
Speaker 2: Not only is the adored father I lost too soon,
Speaker 2: but as a flawed human being who I can now
Speaker 2: mourn more fully and honestly.
Speaker 1: And what a beautiful and thought full peace. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Lily for what you wrote, and thank you for sharing
Speaker 1: it with us. Lily Dancinger's story, her mother and father's
Speaker 1: story here on our American Stories. Folks, if you love
Speaker 1: the great American stories we tell and love America like
Speaker 1: we do, we're asking you to become a part of
Speaker 1: the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America
Speaker 1: is a good and great country, please make a donation.
Speaker 1: A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
Speaker 1: is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
Speaker 1: our American Stories dot com now and go to the
Speaker 1: donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
Speaker 1: That's our American Stories dot Com.