Between Two Pages: Children of Substance

By Susan Hubenthal and GriefNet Parents

A collection of wounded parents, whose children have died from a drug overdose or suicide related to substance abuse, came together on the website GriefNet.org. Each one was damaged by misplaced blame and guilt because they couldnt rescue their children. So deeply filled with sorrow they were unable to find a life after death. They have become a family-in-grief, crying together and comforting one another.

The public must be educated to the reality of the War on Drugs. There are people who still believe in the junkie stereotype. Many presume, that, these children were weak willed and deserved what was coming to them. Some people are judgmental, uneducated, mean spirited, or have blinders on.

Drugs created a helplessness, in these children, that is hard for outsiders to understand. Kicking the drug habit is incalculably difficult! Also powerless are the secondary victims, those who are left behind to cope with the losses this dreadful disease has caused.

Each child that died left behind a parent whose life is now changed forever. They cannot erase the horror of that moment when they first heard that their child had died. The nightmares and the visions of their children dying continue to haunt them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781410704504

Susan Hubenthal

Susan Hubenthal co-authored Between Two Pages: Children of Substance through a curtain of tears, yet it has been a healing and rewarding experience. Susan and the GriefNet parents have a two-fold plea: first, to find an end to the "War On Drugs," secondly, to provide an understanding of addicted children and their families. They want to share with you, the reader, their experiences, their feelings and fears to help you to understand how much these children were loved. They speak honestly about their sorrow in hopes that no other mother, father, sibling, or child has to endure this journey through grief alone. They wish to reach the hearts of those who judge their children and to gently lead them down a path of understanding, lighting the way with the reality that drug abuse and drug accidents can strike any family.

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© 2003 by Susan Hubenthal & GriefNet Parents. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,

or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1-4107-0450-5 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4107-0451-3 (Paperback)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2003090132

IstBooks-rev. 7/28/03

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

FOREWORD

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION\

CHAPTER ONE

DAVID PAUL TRIELOFF

DAVID IS DEAD

HE’S NOT REALLY LOST

DAVID IS LOST?

IN DAVID’S DEN

CHAPTER TWO

JARED RYAN JACKSON LOWRY

DIMES

CHAPTER THREE

JAMES TWOHIG

CHAPTER FOUR

ALICIA ROSE HULTIN

DEDICATED TO MY SWEET DAUGHTER

CHAPTER FIVE

SHANNON, FOREVER 21

SHANNON’S JOURNAL

CHAPTER SIX

JASON ANTHONY KUHN

CHAPTER SEVEN

MATTHEW WESLEY TRAVIS

CHAPTER EIGHT

VANCE W. JOHNSON

CHAPTER NINE

BILLIE SAM DOLPASTY

CHAPTER TEN

ARAM CHRISTOPHER KARAKASHIAN

LETTERS

THE AFTERMATH

CHAPTER ELEVEN

KELLY ARTHUR HUBENTHAL

NO, NOT MY SON!

MY SO CALLED EXISTENCE

CHAPTER TWELVE

UNVEILING OF BLUE’S GRAVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IN LOVING MEMORY

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

GET OVER IT!

THE BIG PICTURE

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE WAR ON DRUGS

DEDICATION

We dedicate this book to three of our departed GriefNet family members, Paul Trieloff, Irma Ajewski and Jennifer Daley.

Paul Trieloff, Ph.D., father of David Trieloff, left us March 22, 2002. We miss his sense of humor, his wisdom, his insight and his caring. Paul believed our stories needed to be heard. He put a tremendous amount of effort and thought into what society should be told about drugs, addiction and the drug war. His words are powerful and passionate. We cannot express, enough, our love, gratitude and the respect we have for Paul. He will live on, in our hearts, for the rest of our days. We offer our love and support to his wife Maxine and daughter Jennifer.

"My beloved husband was able to comfort people in pain by facing his

own."

—Maxine Trieloff—Irma Ajewski, our sister-in-sorrow, and Mom to Charles Chuckie Ajewski, suffered an illness that made it impossible for her to join us, online, for several years. She was very dear to us, and we miss her posts and her loving stories about Chuckie and her family. Sadly, Irma lost her battle and left us on January 4, 2003. We think of her often and we send our love and support to her husband Mike and daughter Denise.

Jennifer Lynn Jackson Lowry Daley departed this life on April 22, 2003. Jennifer’s words blaze across the pages she lovingly wrote about her beloved son, Jared. Jennifer was associated with many humanitarian organizations, drug law reform coalitions, and she was the Advisory Board Director of the Children of Substance Foundation. We offer our love and support to her son Zachariah, her mother Rachel, and to her extensive, loving family. Jennifer enriched the lives of everyone she touched. Her spirit shines brightly in the hearts of all who loved her. She will never be forgotten.

FOREWORD

GriefNet began in February 1994, when I innocently put up on that newborn Internet a site containing grief resources. Within weeks I was receiving email from people around the world who wished to talk about grief and loss, especially the loss of their loved ones. So I created a small discussion group, grief-chat. That began an outpouring of sharing among strangers. They found in this group a safe place to talk about their thoughts and feelings, a place where they could talk as long as they wished and as often as they needed to, any time, day or night. They supported and cared for each other, often in ways that were not being done by family and friends. GriefNet became a place for sharing and healing those coping with grief.

Bereaved parents began coming to GriefNet from the start. But it was only by their request that we became aware of their need to have their own support groups. There are things that only someone else who has lost a child can understand. Similarly, we later learned that bereaved parents who had lost children in specific ways needed to talk with others like them. Thus we were led to create the group, griefparents-substances. for those who had lost their children through that child’s use of some type of drug, legal or illegal, frequently and regularly or once-only.

Parents who have come to this group share a unique form of anguish: their children have died in a way those parents will always feel might have been prevented. Some knew of their children’s substance abuse; others learned only at the time of their child’s death. Some had tried to help their children learn to live without drugs; others had no clue that drugs are available everywhere children go. But all these bereaved parents share that extra, nearly unbearable aspect to their loss. Their inevitable if only feelings of grief have an aspect of truth that only other parents with the same loss can understand and relieve. Only someone who has lost their child in this same horrific way can accept and embrace a parent with this loss.

So it is not surprising that parents in this support group have come to feel like family to each other. They have shared with each other their deepest sorrows, fears, regrets, angers, and many joys. Some have known each other as long as seven years; they have all come to know each other deeply. They have given each other acceptance, caring, understanding, empathy, and love. They have shared with each other thoughts and feelings that they have never, before this book, shared anywhere else.

You are about to step into their world, a world that only they can know. It is only because of their undying love for their dead children that they have taken the risk of sharing this world with you. They do this for two reasons. One is so that other parents who have lost their children to drugs will be able to learn that they are not alone. The second is so that their children will not have died in vain. It will only be when all of us understand substance abuse and those with this addiction can receive adequate rehabilitation that all of us can be free of the dangers of substance abuse. Until then, there but for the grace of God go all of us.

It is with the deepest respect that I thank these authors for allowing me to write these words.

Cendra Lynn, Ph.D.

Founder & Director of GriefNet

PREFACE

Their children are dead! Each one died from a drug overdose or suicide related to substance abuse. None of the parents, you will meet here, will ever be able to erase the horror of that moment when they heard their child had died. The nightmares and the visions of their children dying continue to haunt them. The questions repeat over and over. Did they suffer? Were they afraid? Was it an accident or something else? What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? Why?

None of the parents of Between Two Pages: Children of Substance have published books. But they have joined together to tell their story. Many of them have never met personally, but have found a loving connection through their grief.

These parents are experienced in dealing with the grief that accompanies the loss of a child. Each have lived through the most profound experience any human being can endure, leaving them to search for meaning in their child’s death, desperately not wanting them to be forgotten.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A profound thanks to our own Cendra Lynn Ph.D., Founder and Director of GriefNet, for her tireless efforts to make GriefNet a secure place for us to come together. It has become our lifeline, our safety net from our cold reality. GriefNet parents-substances has helped us to find a life after the death of our children. Grief is a lonely voyage through stormy and uncharted waters. Together, we have learned grief is now a part of our lives. We cannot sail around it; we must journey through it in order to grow, find peace, and begin to live our lives differently.

We love and appreciate our families and friends whose love and understanding sustained us through our darkest days. Our love for you is immeasurable.

Our gratitude and thanks to Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., Director of Safety 1st, a Drug Policy Alliance project, for seeing value in our book and for her generous donation to the Children of Substance Foundation to help with the publication expenses of our book.

Kevin Zeese, President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, encouraged the writing of this book. He continues to mentor, some of us, to speak out for drug law reform. Kevin paves pathways to enlightenment with his intelligence, insight, understanding, generosity and kindness.

Love and thanks to the many GriefNet-substances parents who donated ink cartridges, money and even a printer to make the dream of publishing our book a reality.

We are, each of us, angels with one wing and we can fly only by embracing one another.

—Lucian de Crescenzo—

INTRODUCTION

We are a collection of wounded parents whose children have died from a drug overdose or suicide related to drug abuse. We came together tenuously on a site called GriefNet. Each one devastated by societies misplaced blame and guilt because we couldn’t save our children, and filled with sorrow so deep we were unable to find life after death. Most of us have never met, yet we consider ourselves a family, crying together and comforting one another.

Each of us, are in various stages of grief. New members are welcomed into the club nobody wants to join. Those of us, who have lived with grief longer, do our best to show love and sympathy to the newly bereaved. Grief is a roller coaster; we never know when the ride will suddenly plunge sending us spiraling downward, all over again. We help each other through those frightening times, all knowing and understanding the nightmare of losing a child to drugs.

We are teachers, homemakers, medical professionals, single parents, couples, and grandparents. We live all over the United States, in Belgium and Australia. We have become a family of brothers and sisters in grief, joined together by understanding and unconditional love. Our passion is to touch as many people as possible, regarding adolescent drug use. We no longer worry about society pointing fingers at us. We have experienced the ultimate pain. Nothing and no one can ever hurt as much as our children’s deaths.

We share ourselves openly and honestly through our unedited Emails, expressing our pain, our deepest thoughts, our memories and our wish to have another chance to rescue our children. We share our joys as well as our sorrows. We are experts in grieving, bound together for eternity.

We continue to search for the meaning of our children’s deaths, not wanting them to be forgotten. Between Two Pages: Children of Substance honors their memory. Our children were loved! They have moms and dads, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and friends who miss them and mourn them. We don’t want another child to die from substance abuse, and we certainly don’t want another parent to suffer the agony that we have.

The title of the book, Between Two Pages: Children of Substance, has deep meaning for the grief parents. The first part, Between Two Pages, refers to a memory book. On the first page is a birth announcement; the last page, a death certificate. It was the title and subject of a Memorial and speech to honor Jared Ryan Jackson Lowry by his Mother Jennifer Daley. The second part, Children of Substance, was the title of an essay by Susan Hubenthal in remembrance of her son Kelly Arthur Hubenthal. It has, now, become a nonprofit organization. The Children of Substance Foundation was organized to continue the writing and publishing of books and other literature, and to offer support to grieving parents whose children have died from substance abuse. We wish to give a voice to our dead children in hopes that our losses can help others avoid our private hell. If your child has died from substance abuse, then you know the agony of life without your child. The GriefNet parents of Between Two Pages: Children of Substance understand your pain. In the sharing of our stories, we hope it will help you heal. With so many drug related deaths around the globe, we know this book can reach many wounded hearts. Our hope is to give comfort to those whose lives have been profoundly affected by drugs. Ours is a universal story that speaks a common language. We honor our children with this book, and we want to reach those who have been unsympathetic to our plight. The Children of Substance Foundation has a website at, www.childsub.org, that includes a list of recognized experts and organizations in drug law reform.

Most of the proceeds, from this book, will go into the Children of Substance Foundation. Our dream is to one day be financially able to assist surviving children and siblings with educational scholarships. Some of the proceeds will also go to GriefNet, a sage and loving place for support and understanding.

We have lost the War On Drugs, yet we wish to help others find hope and strength to continue the fight.

CHAPTER ONE

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DAVID PAUL TRIELOFF

October 25, 1966 to April 15, 1997

Beloved Son of Paul and Maxine Trieloff

Brother of Jennifer

DAVID IS DEAD

The call came at 2:00 A.M. on April 16th. It was my son’s live-in fiancée. I don’t know how to tell you this. David is dead. After getting the basic details, I am again at the computer at 5:00 A.M. to pour out my heart.

David had pulled into a gas station somewhere around 11:00 P.M. The attendant noticed him slumped over the wheel, called the police and paramedics. They arrived first, to find shallow breathing, and failed to resuscitate him. Drugs? Possibly. Foul play? Who and how do we know? My wife asks, What if you can’t take it? I lamely respond, You dig down deep inside and from somewhere inside, you find the power to carry on. The following was written after our return from Arlington and his funeral/memorial service. I sent it to my wife’s school and to the prison where I worked.

April 21, 1998

Our Son, David, was 31 when his untimely death occurred. We have been to Arlington, Virginia where he lived and only returned on this date. He has been cremated and his ashes are to be returned home, where we will inter them. Many people at the funeral/memorial services in Arlington remembered David for all his many kindnesses and humanitarian efforts.

He had just completed his advanced LLM Law Degree at Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. He was a member of the Maryland Bar, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Court of International Trade, and the American Bar Association. He worked at the Fairfax Public Law Library in Fairfax, Virginia. He was a computer whiz kid who held a free weekly phone-in program on AOL for the public where he answered questions on employment law. He established the first on-line service and computer network for attorneys at the Bar’s Law Library. He helped the public by setting up forms they could use in the perplexing legal matters with which they had to deal. He also taught and brought law clerks into the library system by setting up user-friendly computer carrels reserved solely for their use. This work was a first and reported in the local paper. Several of his law clerk students took time out of their work to come to tell us how much they loved and admired him. Several plan to go on to law school after David’s encouragement.

The library plans to honor David by establishing a fund to continue his good works for students and the public. We would ask that no flowers be sent anywhere as he cannot smell them nor can we tolerate them. Instead, please send a donation in the name of David Trieloff to:

The Fairfax Bar Foundation for David Trieloff Memorial C/O

Fairfax Public Law Library at room 308

4110 Chain Bridge Road

Fairfax, Va. 22030

Attn: Bobbi

We, and others, dearly loved, admired and enjoyed our son-for his brilliant mind-the fastest and most insightful reader we and others have ever known-for his audacious but kindly sense of humor-for his generosity of heart and mind which he gave equally and freely to all and for just being the good loving person who was ever caring and helpful to others. We are already daily reminded of him in so many, painful ways that it is very hard to talk about him. The Medical Examiner believes it was a heart attack made worse by erroneously taking asthma inhalant medication which David thought would relieve the tightness in his chest. The Family he left behind will pay dearly for his loss in our daily reminders of what might yet have been.

We thank you in advance for your condolences.

Paul C. H. Trieloff, Ph. D., Maxine Trieloff and Jennifer Trieloff.

(When I wrote the above, I was ashamed to openly admit that David had really died of a snorted heroin overdose. I reasoned that telling people, at the prison where I worked, would be a bad thing to do. After joining GriefNet, I began to see things differently. I found a new voice, a new courage, and a new willingness to be open and honest about his death. Trying to hide the facts of his death by heroin, because of my shame, I believe is not an uncommon reaction. For shame comes at us in so many ways. And it adds another burden to the one we already must bear.)

Now it’s a Sunday, the day I have to decide whether to return to work on Monday. David’s interment is scheduled for Wednesday at 2:30 P.M. His ashes had been returned to the Tishman Funeral Home where we live. We saw the oak box we’d chosen out of deference to the carpenter grandfather David never knew. The only time the two were together was the day we brought David home from the hospital after his birth. My Dad, dying of bone cancer, too weak to hold him, cried-one of the few times in his life that I’d seen that. Dad was dead within two months. There sat the box, on a pedestal provided by the home, a plain oak box eleven and one-half inches long. Dad would have liked the craftsmanship. But for my wife and myself, anguish shook through us as waves of sobs came crashing up. Now, two days later, I fight the reminiscences that repeatedly threaten my hold