Last night I learned my sister died
somewhere in Dallas, June, 2001.
They say she was living in a crack house.
A County Coroner’s report online
listed no kin to claim her body.
I sip my coffee and wonder
exactly how long a good life lasts.
Did it end when she was fifteen
glowing in yellow chiffon?
Ah, I was jealous, a year older, tall
and invisible in my borrowed prom dress.
Maybe it ended when
she left home at sixteen,
got married, got divorced,
two babies later somehow got to Hollywood,
worked as a walk-on, LA sparkly,
visited the Tate mansion one week before
Charlie Manson did, drove to San Francisco
with her new boyfriend and his green convertible.
I worked at a bank, but I’d never seen
so much money. Then the telephone calls came.
Can you take the kids?
Just for a while? And I did
until she came screaming back:
I’m their mother, not you.
She was living on a commune with a rock star,
and so it went. Did I say she was beautiful?
The last time I saw her, she was standing
on a corner mid-Wilshire Los Angeles,
screaming at me, her face twisted up
with I don’t know what needs.
I only know that
I no longer had time for my sister,
not even for a cup of coffee.
This is so sad! For a short time my husband and I were official guardians of a sixteen-year-old already a runaway reckless with drug use. Even when he turned 18, he was still our loved son, listed, with our own four dear children in official files. We stood by him as him as he went on to multiple addictions, sent him to rehab, tried tough love, seemed to suceed only to have him relapse. It would take a book to describe his ups and downs, and we only lost him after many years.
ReplyDeleteWell written, but very sad. There are way too many runaways out there all alone because of drugs. BJ
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