Stranger Danger
It’s a lovely celebration of a wonderful friend’s 40th.
It’s full of people who do not know us.
Here, polite conversation is a danger.
For us, small talk gets big fast.
“So, what do you guys do?”
I let Adam answer.
In a party full of film industry, this will surely distract, for a while.
“And you, Sheila, what do you do? are you in film too?”
Gulp!
For fear of ruining the celebratory tone... should I lie? Too late to deflect.
“I write about catastrophic bereavement and train people to reverse opioid overdose”
Well, they did ask.
It’s hardly the line for a cheery birthday celebration no matter how breezily I say it.
And I am mindful not to be too nonchalant because I am only too aware of how many have been touched, in some way, by this devastating epidemic.
And so, the conversation moves to an unavoidable intensity.
People are hungry for the knowledge of overdose reversal because they know too many loved ones are either at risk or have already been killed.
The death of my boy will inevitably be revealed and soon they will share their own losses.
There’s no going back.
To cut them off will be heartless and maybe, for them, re-traumatizing.
Being too light hearted will dishonor their own loss, as their own unresolved grief floods their eyes with tears.
Sometimes, the access point to this scenario begins with “Do you have kids?”
Again, I let Adam answer and each time I wonder which way he’ll go.
He first dazzles them with tales of George spinning through the air on a snowboard for the British Team, or his lycra clad cycling antics, or his film industry career… and that works for a while.
I wring my hands under the table waiting for one of two inevitable next steps.
Either these lovely people will sense missing information and ask if we have other children
OR
Adam will, as I do, feel disloyal to Luke for omitting him. Either way, our tragedy will out.
It’s a well rehearsed dance and yet it always ends in the same place.
However hard it may seem, this is my life’s work now and I am always happy to help share information that may help save a life or soothe a broken heart.
But now, how do you break this intense conversation to lighten the mood?
It becomes a mutual tango between us and these kind strangers.
Do we risk not honoring their own tragic stories?
Do they risk not honoring ours?
My mind wanders to flashbacks of Maggie Smith’s iconic line to change the mood “Have a sausage, dear”
Our friends see it happening from across the festivities, signaled by the now familiar sign language of me placing my palm to my fist ... the visual demonstration of an opioid locking onto the brain’s opioid receptors ... the mechanism of opioid death.
This is a far cry from when I got to say
“I am a designer”
“I am a calligrapher”
and all the amusing anecdotes of lavish events that would follow.
There’s no avoiding it.
Yes, we are the people with the dead child,
sorrow permanently laced through our bones like a stick of tragic rock.