Stunning Acts of Headlong Faith

by

A.J. Daulerio

All illustrations

by Edith Zimmerman

Vol. 4, Issue 37

*****

It’s a family disease

*****

I never wrote about my 20-something nephew here, although I've been tempted many times. You see, he's a heroin addict who has been trying to get clean for the past few years, bouncing in and out of facilities, recovering, relapsing, and then turning up in some deeper, darker place. He gets treatment, finds a sponsor, and commits to sobriety, but then he gets distracted or complacent, and then he goes out again, as many of us often do.

The last few times he's relapsed, my sister called me from her bed on Facetime. I could tell by her expression that she'd been crying but trying not to cry–there is a distinction by now–as she wordlessly shook her head, and I would know not to even ask for details, only that it had happened again. 

But things were going okay this past spring. My nephew had a halfway house bed to sleep in and a decent, fulfilling job to occupy his time. And he had the gym. He lived at the gym. I went to Philly at the end of April for my friend's memorial service, and I had dinner with him, my sister, and one of my nieces. When we picked him up, I was shocked at his appearance. He was enormous. He was 6’3 1/2 and his shoulders were so large it looked like he had two bowling balls stuffed underneath his T-shirt. The gangly adolescent in my memory was now replaced by a Marvel superhero. 

It was a magical night, all of us slamming down Olive Garden's nonsensical quasi-Italian fare (neverending sauces, anyone?), laughing and pounding the table in a way that I hadn't experienced with family in what felt like forever. I tried to compose myself because I thought I needed to be more mournful–my friend was dead and I'd just embraced his grief-shocked wife a couple hours before, and now here I was wiping tears out of my eyes from laughing so hard while eating ravioli that tasted like it had been cooked inside a dishwasher. 

When we dropped my nephew off, I jumped out to grab him. "Wait up, man, I want to give you a hug." It was like hugging Stonehenge. "You're doing great, you little asshole," I said. 

As he walked away, I watched his vape smoke engulf him like a spirit. I turned to my sister. "He's doing so great," I said. 

For the past month, he's gone silent, which most likely means he's back in rehab again. Some faceless intake person at another janky rehab has confiscated his phone until further notice. I think this will be the eighth one he's been to in six years. 

I messed up and told my sister all we can do is hope for the best, but she corrected me quickly: She doesn't do hope anymore. Faith is all that's left.

But this is not that kind of story. This is about a different type of faith. 

*****

Two years ago, he'd just moved back to the Philly area after a long, tumultuous few years bouncing in and out of rehabs from Florida to York, Pa. He started waiting tables at an Italian restaurant in New Hope, Pennsylvania. (I assure you it is actually called New Hope. That's not a symbolic device. If it were, I'd call it New Faith.) 

And in this New Hope restaurant, he met a girl, whom we'll call Miranda. Miranda also waited tables, and there was an instant connection. But Miranda was a normie and didn't know much about what it meant to be in recovery. It didn't matter, though: She saw the man in front of her–the thoughtful, gentle, determined man–and not the troubled one with the junkie past. It didn't take very long for them to fall in love. It was a regenerating, honest love–the kind that transcends people's complicated histories and believes in an abundant future. 

My sister was usually wary of how quickly my nephew would seemingly fall for a girl forty seconds after he'd been out of rehab. One drug for another, that sort of thing. But she always liked Miranda and how she cared for her son and, more importantly, for herself. Miranda's life wasn't undergirded by the relationship. She was about to finish nursing school. She had bigger plans, a life built on helping people. 

"I always had a good feeling about her," my sister said. 

Miranda's sister was due to get married last fall, and my nephew had taken time off from work and requested a furlough from his halfway house to attend. Weddings are tough to power through no matter how sober you are, but he was ready for it. My sister said he Facetimed her from the Macy's dressing room, goofily showing off the suit he was wearing to the wedding. He was wide-eyed and grinning throughout the call; recovery shot out of him like sunlight. 

What happened between that moment and the day of is anyone's guess, but if that mystery could be solved, then addiction would not be the infuriating, heartbreaking illness it is. But the day before the wedding, my nephew found heroin again, or heroin found him again. The exact details didn’t matter: he was in real trouble and needed to get into detox right away. Miranda was crushed. But maybe she saw some cracks creeping up the side of the building that no one else did. Perhaps this wasn't a surprise. 

Now here's where the story takes a turn. After Miranda's family learned about the relapse, I expected to hear they were angry about the terrible timing and how he'd darkened such a blessed family event. They'd be disgusted with him, and that's a perfectly reasonable response. You've been to weddings before. All that pageantry is mind-numbingly stressful, especially on the bride's side. (If I relapsed on heroin the day of my girlfriend's sister's wedding, I would not expect to be invited to Thanksgiving that year or ever again.) 

But that was not Miranda's family. First, Miranda's mother, who we'll call Joan, volunteered to drive him to detox. Wedding or not, her daughter's boyfriend needed help, and she was up for it. But then the groom-to-be stepped in and insisted he could take him–his future mother-in-law had to get herself ready and he'd be happy to help. His wedding was important but so was this.  

But Joan ended up driving him. Joan got him there, safe and sound. She made the wedding and it was still a happy day.

When my sister told me that story, I couldn't fully process it. I mean, I was told they were nice people, and they were very fond of my nephew, but still–that's an extraordinary level of compassion and goodness I didn't know existed in the world. I was raised in a family that was only capable of shame during my most difficult, embarrassing and demoralizing moments. And I know I’m guilty of this type of behavior toward others. It’s so much easier and self-satisfying to watch someone fall and then turn away from them. Helping them was only hurting everyone–consequences are necessary.

Now, it's also worth noting that Joan had no connection to the recovery community before all this–she's not a therapist, social worker, or rehab technician. But right after she dropped him off at detox, she dove right in–she and Miranda both became very educated on the insanity of addiction and relapse. They quickly found an Al-Anon group.

And it goes without saying that one of the hardest lessons for intelligent people to learn about addiction or alcoholism or mental illness is this: Things are okay until they're not okay. Adjust accordingly.

*****

A kid I knew in high school died of Hodgkin's lymphoma a couple years after college. I was good friends with most of his best friends, who were all pallbearers at his funeral. It had shaken everyone out of extended adolescence: death was no longer an illusion and was coming for us all.

But I think about this odd little detail from the day of the funeral because it's got this Magnolia-like quality to it. The driver who had come to pick up his parents and take them over to the church that morning had a heart attack on their front lawn and died. An ambulance was called and took him away, but he was gone on the gurney. The parents drove themselves to their own son's funeral.

When I heard about how Miranda's family handled the wedding relapse, I thought about that limo driver and my friend's grieving parents. They're not exactly the same destabilizing scenarios, but also not significantly different, in that both are what I'd qualify as very clear-cut examples of "emotional overload" and feelings I'm not entirely sure I'd be able to process. But knowing these moments are possible–that life has its own subversive sense of humor–is genuinely helpful, sobering information. 

*****

My sister's been sitting with both her son's relapse and our dad's ongoing dementia saga, yet I have not seen her cry on Facetime at all this month. I'm sure she's done so privately because how could she not? Two people she loves are lost in different yet very similar ways, both by diseased minds. 

"I have faith my son will get it someday," she says. "I have faith he figures out what he's doing isn't working."

Faith stops the overload.  

As for my nephew and Miranda, well, they broke up about a year ago. He needed to focus on sobriety, and she needed to focus on nursing school. But Joan stayed in touch with him to congratulate him on his sobriety date each month and also to check in with my sister from time to time. He didn’t respond to her text this time so she reached out to my sister, who then told Joan about the relapse. She’d keep her updated on any news.

Just last weekend, my sister said Joan reached out again. "Just got a text from Joan asking how I'm holding up and sending me her love. She is an angel for sure." 

Because what are angels? They’re just little acts of faith for those who need it most.