Chris' life according to me

The way I remembered it, when Chris was about 18, his life took a different path. He became involved with substance abuse. My first 2 sons, Brock and Logan, adored their Uncle Chris. However, once Chris turned to drugs and alcohol, the fiercely protective mother that I was, began to withdraw my sons from him. The real Chris became hidden. The substance took over. I no longer trusted him. Brock and Logan were about 6 and 8 by this time and I no longer wanted Chris influencing them. Chris without the drugs, yes...but not Chris with the drugs. This is who he became to us.


I regret that I did not know Chris in his adult life. Do I feel guilty about this? Yes. Do I wish I could go back and change things? I do...especially this week.


I didn't want him influencing my very impressionable boys. They looked up to him. So I pulled them away. We became outsiders to his life, barely looking in.

Chris loved children and I know he looked forward to having his own someday. That never happened. He was so controlled all of his adult life by drugs and alcohol.

There is a paragraph that I quoted in a recent post on this blog from CS Lewis, "You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk..."

I believe that Chris could not "see" what he was doing. The past over 20 years of his life he was so very controlled by the substance. He lost the power he was born with to control his life. What started out as his agency to choose, became his bondage.

In his suicide letter he left on email to a select few people, one of them being our father, he stated, "...If I had a wife, children, or somebody that greatly depended on me, I would never consider this. And if my mother were still alive, I don't think I could do this..."

He felt no one needed him. His wife left him, he did not have children, and his mother was dead.

On one occasion after his wife Jenny left him, Chris and I had a lengthy talk one evening over the phone. The extreme depression he felt was evident. He admitted to me that his marriage had no way to survive because, in his words, "We didn't have religion to keep us together. We didn't have children. We had nothing to bind us. She had no reason to stay." I remember thinking at the time...'he built his home on sand.'

He had no hope because he had lost control. After years and years of being controlled by an outside substance, he gave up.

I've always loved my little brother, and I always will. I was 13 when he was born so I have many fond memories of him as a baby and a little boy. He was very adored by all of us. He was and is my parents' baby. If they were guilty of anything, it was indulging him. What parent doesn't?

One particular incidence stands out in my mind. Basically this is how I remember it. Chris was young, somewhere in elementary school age. My mom had him with her when she was banking one day. On their way home Mom realized she was given too much money by the teller. She told Chris this and explained how they needed to go back to the bank and return the money. Chris obviously remembered the good feeling in doing this, because on another later errand occasion with our Mom, he said, "I hope they give us too much money at the bank so we can take it back to them again."

Chris was raised with goodness. He knew what goodness was. And somewhere in the adult Chris, the goodness was still there. He had a hand written note in the pocket of his pants when he died. It stated, "...You have my permission to make use of my organs for somebody in need..."