Yesterday I went to the funeral of a 23 year old who was the son of a business associate of mine. I had never met the man or was even familiar with his family, yet I cried so hard during that funeral.
This man had been fighting drug addiction and was in and out of treatments centers with no success. He died Sunday of an over-dose. The service did a good job of recreating his life for me. I saw pictures of him from his date of birth until the time of his death. Some of his writings were read to us. He played blue grass and all the music at the service was blue grass.
I saw the pain his parents, sister, brother, other relatives and friends were in. Shock, anger, and plain old pain was present in the room. I have a brother, a son, I have friends who this might have happened to. It all was so normal that how could this person have lost his life to drugs. We like to keep drugs in the inner city or in a minority race group. We hope the family was dysfunctional or battered. None of this was the case. This traditional family fell prey to drugs.
I grew up in the time of LSD and when the long hairs were called druggies. We did not realize what was to follow. Drugs are there in so many ugly forms. They are even present in our houses. People become addicted easily and the getting off them is so tough. We need to openly agree that drugs are in our society and that all of us need to be responsible to help get this under control.
Perhaps the hundreds of people that attended the funeral yesterday are talking about it like me, and asking others to help stop deaths such as this. That small boy in the pictures playing with his dog needed to grow up to be an old man.
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