My Beautiful Son

          My Beautiful Son: Another Methamphetamine Statistic

        Published online, September 9, 2017

“It'll go fast, Dad.” That's what he said. Twelve years in prison

“It'll go fast, Dad. It will be okay.”

Those words cut deep, seeming to strip the flesh from my bones. Eight years in a Washington state prison for crimes my son is certainly guilty of. “Murder by neglect” according to the King County prosecutor is what caused the death of my granddaughter—his daughter, Royale.

Fifteen months later, I still don't know how to act or what to say. My heart is broken. My beautiful son, now age thirty five will spend at least the next eight years locked up, with the label “baby killer” hanging over his head.

And Royale, my pretty little granddaughter is over a year in the ground, now. The flowers on her grave are wilted and dry as paper and the Oregon moss is beginning to creep onto the edge of the marble head stone. I long to return to the grave and scrub the stone clean and give her fresh flowers again, but I can't do it yet. Not yet. I feel badly because I don't want the little girl to think Grandpa has abandoned her. But I can't yet stand the pain. I hope wherever she is, she understands.

But my son is not a monster! He is a victim of methamphetamine. He used to be a gentle man who talked of going to India and making wells for the people there, so they would have clean drinking water. He wanted to learn how to fly and become a pilot. He struggled to work and take care of his partner Mariah and their three daughters and ultimately he was not able to.

But talking to him on the phone the other day was like talking to a person just waking up from a long sleep, or coming out of a trance. “I think I've lost my girls,” he said. He sounded as if the reality of his drug addicted actions had finally just occurred to him. Hearing those words was crushing, because I know that he has lost his girls, too.

He has been locked up now over a year in the King County jail, being investigated and awaiting sentencing, waiting to be sent to prison and de-toxing from his five year addiction to meth. I realize now from several phone conversations with him during this past year he has been awaiting trial that his addiction to meth created a new person. It rewired his mind.

He became uncaring, selfish, abusive and dangerous to himself, his girlfriend Mariah and his children. He became a person I didn't know and indeed he didn't know himself. Living in another state made it easy for him to hide his addiction from me and the desperation of his circumstances. It was too easy to lie to Dad about how good things were, saying how he had plenty of money and a couple of good cars. I think he even believed his lies. The reality was he and his little family had been living in their SUV for months, homeless,  before they finally got into a charity provided one bedroom apartment. 

His mother and her family members, also living near him hid his addiction from me. They too helped his crash along by keeping secrets from me and enabling him in the worst ways. When I called his mother three times in the eighteen months before Royale died, expressing my worry, telling her I knew something was wrong, and telling her my fear that he was involved in drugs and needed "recovery" she laughed. My son's mother said he was "doing just fine" and didn't need the "recovery" I mentioned. When she finally admitted to me several weeks later that he was using drugs she said he had told her "Its so I can have energy, Mom. So I can work" and that seemed good enough for her. My ex-wife, and her family members, they too are responsible for the trajectory of his life and the fact that he is in prison. They too bear guilt in the death of my beautiful granddaughter. 

Besides Royale, my son has twin daughters, age three, Patience and Blessing and a new baby Gracie seven months old. Then there is Heaven age eight and Sophia age ten, from his other former girlfriends. My son's incarceration is a tragedy of enormous emotional impact to all of these children. These children are my children, too.

Yes, you have lost your daughters, son. You have also lost a huge portion of your life, your job, your two cars, your home and probably your father, too.

I was forty five when my son was born. I am now eighty one. "It's not my love you've lost, son," I want to tell him. 

But I am eighty one and travel is nearly impossible to a distant out of state Washington prison at my current age. “The prosecution has offered eight years if I plead guilty to second degree murder by neglect, or a sure fifteen years if I go to trial. What should I do, Dad?”

I didn't know how to answer his question, but I tried. “Take the best deal you can get,” I whispered hoarsely, fighting the urge to yell, cry, vomit. Will I live long enough to see him again? I don't know. And I know it’s something he must think about too. If he serves eight years, I will be eighty-nine-years old when he is released. If he is released in five years for good behavior, if that is even a possibility, I will be eighty six.

His various children have three mothers. They too have lost. Royale's very young mother Mariah is imprisoned as well; also charged with the same crimes and has yet to be sentenced. These two parents, failed to properly feed, properly diaper or provide medical care for their underweight, very sick baby—my very pretty four-month-old granddaughter Royale.

Royale stopped breathing at five am that June morning of 2016, and couldn't be resuscitated by either her parents, or the arriving paramedics. She was taken to the hospital DOA. “Meth ruined my life,” Royale's mother wrote in a letter to my wife and me. “Meth ruined my life,” she has wept to us over the phone.

How wide a swath has the grim reaper's scythe cut through my family? It feels as if they are all lost and I cannot save them. I’ve spent my life taking care of others and I cannot save them. I’m too old, cannot work anymore and feel as helpless as a child.

Mariah too, is awakening from the nightmare and coming out of the trance of the insanity of drug addiction. “I know I've lost my girls,” she cries to my wife over the phone. “I know I've lost my girls.” While she awakens--baby Royale remains asleep, forever. Can the swath of destruction be made whole again? Can things ever go back to the way they were before?

                                    NO.

The destruction is too wide, too deep and too permanent. My son’s oldest daughter Sophia will be a grown woman of eighteen if her dad gets out in eight years. Heaven will be sixteen, the twins Patience and Blessing will be eleven and baby Gracie will be nearly nine. And none of these five girls will know their father. Gracie is seven months old and has never been held or touched by her father.

How do the mothers of my son’s daughters tell them of their father? The father  they won't see for almost a decade? What lies do they tell them, to comfort and appease them because of this huge empty cavern in their lives? How do they explain their father is guilty of causing their sister's death? There is no replacing the lost father and the lost time. These girls will grow up, but not with his guidance or his care. Instead they will share the shame of an imprisoned and absent father and I will try to take his place for as long as I can, if I can.

Now, my family has become a statistic. Statistics are devoid of emotion and the prison system is full of them. The prison population in Washington State will now increase by two inmates. The welfare system will have five more children in their responsibility and care. Communication will be by phone and tear stained letters.

                                                            And we will wait.

            By Don DuPay