YEAR 24- A POEM

YEAR 24

Its another day that you are gone

People say with time I'll heal 

But they are wrong

Everything I see reminds me of you 

From the music I play, to the sky so blue

Heaven is so far away 

And yes I know there will come a day

That we will be together

Separate no more

Your life was so short

Only year 24

Days will go by and life will continue

I will smile, laugh, a tear will trickle

I love you my angel you will never be

Only just a memory

For you are my son, we will never be apart

Even though you are gone

You will always be in my heart.♡

written by: Stacey Powell

dedicated to my son Christopher Michael King who lost his battle to heroin 

on 12/01/2012. 

I wrote this poem a few days after Christopher passed.  I couldn't figure

a title and my son Matthew looked at me and said, "Its in the poem mom. It should be called 

Year 24." Seemed to stick.

This was a very dark time for me.  But even in dark times as you can tell by my poem, I was
trying and looking toward the future.  I just couldn't give it.  There was just to much to continue to live for.  

THE EARLY YEARS:

     Christopher was born August twenty-fourth nineteen eighty eight.  He was eight pounds seven ounces, twenty one inches long and my first born. I was eighteen years old when I gave birth to Christopher.  Which anymore, sadly,  is very accepted nowadays. He had the biggest brown eyes and the deepest dimples when he smiled that you had ever seen.  In ninety ninety three I married at the age of twenty three (not to Christopher's father),  and then two years later on December thirty first nineteen ninety five, seven and a half years after Christopher was born, I received another precious gift, my youngest son Matthew.  I was the mother of two precious baby boys, and from the moment I held my boys in my arms for the first time, I knew I would protect them with my life.  I knew I needed to give them the best possible life I could possibly give them.
   
     As life continued on, I divorced Matthew's father in nineteen ninety seven and decided to go to school to become a medical assistant. Which I am happy to say I have been in the field for twenty years now.  Just out of tech school, with two children, both needing childcare. Christopher was eight years old and needing before and after school care, and Matthew was two and needed all day care.   And no... I was not on public assistance.  I was making my way on my own. Child care was about three hundred a week for both kids, plus groceries, rent, utilities, gas for car, etc. Matthew's father, thank god.  You couldn't count on him to pick up his child and be a father or for anything else for that matter, but I could always count on him working everyday.  So I did get child support.  Receiving that five hundred dollars a month did help. I'm not going to lie.  Which back in the day twenty years ago wasn't to bad.  It supplemented my paychecks, but it still was not enough to do the extra things that you want to do with your children as a mother.  The fun things.
 
   The kids and I were not able to do things like go to the movies all the time or go get lunch all the time but we did definitely improvise. Those things were just to expensive.  Friday nights we would come home from work and school,  heat up a frozen pizza, lay a big blanket on the floor, get in our pj's and watch a Disney movies on VHS tapes.  Every year I  would buy a zoo pass so that we could go to the zoo anytime we wanted.  The Columbus Zoo is amazing (Christopher would be upset if I didn't add that in) and we would pack a lunch, pick a area of the zoo to visit (most of the time it was the gorillas-ha ha!) and then as long as the kids ate all their lunch, they could have a snack.  Christopher would always pick a blue freeze,  and Matthew... he always pick a ice cream cone that would run down his face quicker than he could eat it.  oh...the simpler days, the days of no worries, the days just my boys and me, the days I wish I could get back today. Every night I would make dinner.  Not mac and cheese out of the box.  But a homemade lasagna or chicken and rice.  My nextdoor neighbor Tracy would laugh at me and say," Why are you cooking a full course meal for you and the two kids.  Why not just open a can of speghetti o's?  I said to her,"Because I want them to remember that we sat around the table, that I always no matter what cooked them good, homemade food."  She thought I was crazy, but I continued to have our homecooked meals.  Funny how you look back now and how much something so simple means now.  A couple of memories I have is Christopher running all over at the park and noticing his brother just sitting there.  He took his hand and took him all over the park.  He never left his brother behind or when Matthew was born Christopher woke up, on a school night, and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, he looked at me as only Christopher could look at me, picked up Matthew and started feeding him his bottle.  He said, "Its okay mom, close your eyes, I'll feed him."  I'll never forget that.
     My boys and me.  Even from the beginning, we were so very close, and our closeness continued on throughout the years.  It was not until Christopher hit the age of sixteen that I noticed a change. Yes I know.  Kids start changing at about that age.  But there was something different.  Something was happening to him.  Not that he was pulling away from me or our family, but I could feel his life, as he knew it and as we knew Christopher was slowly falling apart, and as far as being able to protect my him...I knew even way back then, that I couldn't do a damn thing about it.
 

ADDICTION RUNS DEEP

     My husband and I talked about death many times when it came to Christopher.  Knowing that if he did not stop that it was inevitable.  I guess in our minds, the thought was that if we talked about it, that if and when it happened that it would somehow be easier to deal with.  That we were preparing ourselves for what could happen if Christopher continued his ways. Which was a total lie on our part.  You can never prepare yourself for your child's death.  You can never prepare yourself to bury your child, to see him lying in his casket lifeless. The numbness you feel, the emptiness inside you, the heartache that overtakes you is unbearable.  For a moment you think "this is not real", only for reality to hit you straight square in the face as if someone just reached in beat the living shit out of you and if that was not enough, continued on to rip out your heart, stepping on it a million and one times.  If you think it will never happen to your child.  Well you are fooling yourself.  My son did not die of natural causes. My son was a heroin addict.  Maybe if  he had died of natural causes such as cancer, or even hit and killed by a car, it may have been somewhat easier. May then I would of been able to make sense of his death. Not that I am downing anyone that has experienced something that horrible.  Again believe me to lose a child anyway is traumatizing.  Then not only did my son pass of heroin overdose, but he was criticized for his death while he was dead.  I was criticized for his death.  I have heard all the nasty comments a mother could possibly hear.  Believe me I understand, I really do.  People that have never experienced their child's death will never understand. Will never "get it".  But at the same time people, you need to open your eyes.  Whether its your child or not...."our" children,  the young adults of this world are dying from this horrible disease.  And its only the beginning.
    
     Our family was not immune to addiction, or even for that matter heroin..  My grandfather was a alcoholic when I was younger and had been known to drink vanilla flavoring when he would come over to watch me when I was a baby.  Which if you don't know has 35% alcohol.  My aunt who was a heroin addict, would come to visit us, and my sister and I as kids thinking she was coming to see us,  all the long had just checked herself out of rehab again thinking she could handle detox on her own.  She later did become clean, but ended up passing a few years ago in her fifties from Hepatitis C complications.  My sister, who I allowed to watch my children once in my home, decided to shoot up heroin in my bathroom. She too is now clean and has been for quite some time.  Which I am grateful for.  But when it comes down to it....addiction runs deep.   In my family we did not hide the fact that addiction ran deep.  I even have seen, in me, addictive behavior with alcohol.  If I was not strong enough and did not pull myself out when I did, I too could have gone that way.  I didn't want to end up that way. I had to much to live for, I had my children I needed to be a mom for.  I wanted more of my life, more for my children, more for my family.  Of course, Christopher went through drug awareness classes at school.  People saying drugs are bad, that your life will be screwed up.  He seen his aunt go through it.  Seen her loose everything.  We talked about it.  Thinking I guess in my own head that if we talk about it, unlike my parents generation, that if we understand that we are not immune to this horrible word "addiction", that my children will take that with them.  They will understand it, they will stay away from it.  To that I laugh.  There was no possible way that Christopher thought that drug addiction was a awesome way of life.  What was the attraction?  What other demons was my son fighting and why was he fighting them?   Only he knew. 

    

    

THE CALL

THE CALL

     To see him lying there, so still, his hands so cold was a feeling unlike any I have ever felt.  Who would of known twenty-four years ago when that precious baby boy came into this world with skin so soft and eyes so big and brown, that his life would of ended so sudden, so abrupt, so silent.  As I stood by his side, holding his hand , I  looked down at the Ohio State shirt under the greenish plaid button down I had picked him out to wear a few days prior.  He loved Ohio State.  I thought it would be comfortable for him.  Maybe it would remind him of home.  After all.  He would be wearing it forever. As I look around I see people everywhere, crying. I didn't think we knew that many people.  People I had not seen for years hugging me, giving their condolences, saying "if I need anything...just let them know."  What are they going to do?  Are they going to bring him back?  I just wish they would all go away.  I don't care what anyone has to say.  Why would I....after all,  I buried my oldest son today. 
   
     It was three thirty in the morning on December second two thousand and twelve when I received the call.  There was no warning, there was no time to prepare.  As I looked at my phone, my father's name appeared on caller ID.  I thought it was my oldest son Christopher.  He had absolutely no sense of time...ever.  When he wanted to call...he would just pick up the phone and call.  I picked up and looked at my cell phone debating on answering.  Christopher always had his way, even in the early morning hours, of pissing people off.  So all I thought to myself was, 'What did he do now? Was he in trouble? Did he wake my parents with something totally off the wall?'  I don't know, not really sure what I was expecting, but I do know that I was not expecting the next words out of my fathers mouth to haunt me the rest of my days, I was not expecting the next words to change my life, my families lives forever.  As I picked up my phone, still groggy, I said, "Hello?" and without warning, my father yelled, "CHRISTOPHER IS DEAD!"  I started screaming at him..."How could you call and tell me these lies!!"  As I sobbed uncontrollably, the phone dropped from my hands and my husband, who woke to our worst fear, raced to catch me as I fell to my knees, looking at him with tears in my eyes, crying the words, "Our boy is gone, Christopher is gone!"