Dear Bobby: A Portrait of Addiction, Depression, Love and Loss

By Jackie Young

"If you have ever dealt with a person dependent upon drugs, this book is for you. If you are the mother, father, sister, brother, friend, co-worker, boss of a drug-dependent person, this book is especially for you. It ripped out my mother’s heart strings that are located in my soul. The revelations are real. It will make you think, look up, and even cry about what is going on in this country and maybe even, in your family."
--Judith Bonaduce, PhD, RN

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jackie Young
• Release date: Apr 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781956019308

Book preview

Acknowledgments

There are several different directions I could go with this because I have been blessed with wonderful family and friends. The short list:

To my parents, Harry and Jackie Burress, and sisters, Lil Thompson, Eileen Shelton and Loretta Marmer - I love you and thank you for always being there for me and for all the beautiful people you’ve brought into my life, from Willy to Maeve.

Thank you to the Young Family for your encouragement.

MaryEllen Healy - When I left you a message about Bobby’s death, you didn’t call me back; you dropped what you were doing and came over. It’s one of the rare times we ran out of things to say, but you spoke volumes by your presence. I treasure our friendship.

Fran and Carol Krawiec – You both make the world a more compassionate, more hospitable and more loving place. We’ve been on the receiving end of your kindness so many times and I know we have a lot of company. It’s priceless to have friends who understand what we’re going through and continually love, support, and pray for us. Thank you for sharing your beach house and dolphin watching with us. Even if you do make up the dolphin watching rules as you go along. Looking at you Fran.

Many thanks to Bobby’s friends. So many of you are our friends too and have helped to carry us through the past three years, just as you helped to carry Bobby through his difficult times. We welcomed every message and card you sent. We’re grateful for all the times you checked on us and that you remember Bobby on his birthday. So many of you weren’t just friends to Bobby, you were lifelines. To everyone who picked him up for meetings, offered help and provided encouragement, thank you. I began to write a short list of names, but there is no short list. There was always one more person I could add. We know who you are; you know who you are; Bobby knows who you are. Thank you to all of you from the bottom of our hearts.

Just as there is no short list for Bobby’s friends, there is no short list for everyone who has cared for us since we lost Bobby. Thank you to those of you who have prayed, visited, texted, called and sent cards. To the artists and poets who shared your creativity with us, thank you. To those of you who cooked for us and those who left boxes of food on our doorstep, thank you. For trees planted in Bobby’s memory, thank you. Every one of you is a blessing.

When planning Bobby’s Memorial Service, I got to the point where I couldn’t make one more decision. Nancy Blackburn, without you, there would have been no music. Dottie and Matty Rysak, without you, there would have been no food. Woodlyn Baptist, without you, there would have been no church. Thank you all.

Thank you to my proofreaders, Bob Young, Judith Bonaduce and Carol Krawiec for your support, encouragement and helpful suggestions.

Many thanks to my editors, Eileen Shelton and Hannah Young. I don’t think either of you realize how much you’ve improved this. As Captain Jack Sparrow said in Pirates of the Caribbean, I think we’ve all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically. Thank you for all you’ve done grammatically, but even more for taking a disjointed collection of quotes, poems, letters and thoughts and pushing it all into book form. You were right about chapters. I was wrong.

To Bobby, Dan, Ben and Tim – Could never be heaven without you.¹

Preface

Anyone who has been impacted by depression and addiction knows how difficult, and often devastating, this combination can be. Our son, Bobby, died at the age of 29 from a drug overdose. He had a depressive personality and battled a heroin addiction for 10 years. When someone so young dies from something that seems preventable, they are often defined by their deaths. However, our lives are really defined by the dash in between the birth and death dates on our tombstones.² We don’t control the dates, but to an extent, we can control the dash. Sadly, for those of us who have lost a child to addiction, we have to come to grips with a son or daughter who lost control of their dash.

Following a child’s death from addiction, families and friends will often either join existing organizations or will establish foundations to raise awareness and support in their child’s memory. This is our attempt to add to the conversation. We read social media posts written by parents we’ve never met who have also lost a child to an overdose. Whether their death was the result of a relapse, experimentation, or a long slow decline, we can identify with the sense of intense pain and loss in each post. We know how helpful it is to be able to relate to other people in similar circumstances. I’ll always remember reading that another mom was afraid of the phone because the call might be bad news. I was relieved to know there was at least one other person out there who braced herself when the phone rang.

We loved Bobby every minute of every day. But we frequently didn’t know what to do to help him. Addiction is brutal. It kept knocking us down, and every time we came back up, we were in unfamiliar territory. Not everything we did was right. Not everything we did was wrong. We did the best we knew how to do at the time. If you’re reading this and have struggled, or are still struggling, with someone you love who is battling an addiction, I hope that by sharing our story it will bring a degree of comfort to know that there are others who understand how difficult it is. I’m not writing this because I think our story is special. I’m writing it because I know it’s not. I realize this runs counter to the reasons people usually write memoirs. However, those of us who love someone who has struggled with addiction are used to a world that runs counter: to hopes, to dreams, to what we want, to what we expect, to what we pray for.

Bobby is also adding to the conversation through some of his journal entries and poetry, which are included here. He was an intense individual, which, coupled with depression and addiction, proved exhausting. When he chose to go to Kensington, a neighborhood in Philadelphia known for drug use, to play Russian roulette with his life one more time, he was physically and emotionally depleted.

That said, we believe what he wrote can provide a sense of empathy, understanding and even encouragement to those who are still struggling, for those who think the same thoughts and sense the same feelings and each perfectly understands the other.³ One of his friends, Eric, told us that Bobby’s death saved his life and that Bobby is a huge driving force for him. By living a meaningful life, Eric hopes to make the friends he’s lost to addiction proud and to help give meaning to their deaths. If you’re fighting addiction, we hope you realize how significant you are and that you also find purpose, lasting recovery and hope for your future.

What follows was written at different times by different people, but primarily by Bobby and me. Plain Songs, Siren Songs and Redemption Songs refer to the names Bobby gave to his poetry collections.

Eric and Bobby at the Eagles Superbowl Parade, 2.8.18

Chapter One

How It Ends

Yeah, you already know how this will end.⁴

—

I am ready for Heaven

I sit at the gates

Pleading Peter let me in

I died today, or maybe yesterday. I can’t remember or say exactly, for does it really matter. Time is irrelevant to me now, being dead. I now have transcended time, and see things in an infinite purity, hidden from us in our earthly bodies...There is...nothing humans have all conjured up in their mystical minds. There is simply spirit. I am still coming to grips with leaving the earthly realm. It was not on the best terms. Not a suicide, but my final overdose. I left a path of destruction and hurt many people. I’m not sure what to do now. I’m currently floating above my parents. As they weep, I weep. I cannot believe I have done this to them. Emotions, unfortunately, do not dissipate.... I will be hating to inform you of many things, answers, and answers which just lead to a plethora of new questions. Answers are tricky like that; they are so frequently unsatisfying. I had so many questions in life. So many questions I was tortured. And now, being dead, I hope to find some answers. I’ll go looking for Jesus tomorrow, but today I am with my parents, holding them as their world is turning upside down. They were prepared for this moment as best they could. Yet nothing can truly prepare you for the death of your first-born boy. My beautiful boy my father would call me. I was truly loved by many people. But felt none of it. Now I do. Being a sober soul, I feel everything. I am going to continue to comfort my parents as we cry. I’ll talk to you guys later.

— Bobby, undated journal entry

—

Dear Bobby,

It’s been 41 days since we last saw you, 38 days since our last contact, 37 days since you left us, and 36 days since we got the phone call from the investigator at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office. We knew that you were tired and ready to go. You told us as much. We, however, were still hopeful and would never have been ready to let you go. When we got the news, Dad and I waited almost a day before we told anyone. Maybe we thought letting other people know would make it too real. Daddy talked to the examiner on Saturday night, and then we told Hannah Sunday morning. We were able to positively ID you over the phone by your tattoos. As you know, I’ve never been a big fan of them, even though you had some pretty cool ones, but I was grateful for them that night. A drive into Philadelphia to positively identify you would have been a nightmare. Sunday evening, we started calling and people started coming over. Grammy, Aunt Peaches and Uncle Bill, Neese, Uncle Larry and Aunt Loretta, Jules, Grace, MaryEllen, Fran and Carol, Ben, Tim, Rossi, Josiah. Ferry was in Ireland, as you knew.

On Monday night, Ben got a bunch of your friends together at Milk Boy in Philly and The Dead Milkmen played. I didn’t realize just how fitting that was until I was going through one of your journals and read, When I die, have a big party, a memorial rock concert…I want Dead Milkmen to come sing about punk rock girls. Afterwards Ben wrote to you on your Facebook page, Tonight was perfect. We have so many amazing friends with such beautiful souls. I felt you in that room tonight. I miss you with every piece of my broken heart. I’ll see you again in paradise, my beautiful and unique brother/best friend.

Your Memorial Service was Thursday night at Woodlyn Baptist Church. At times, the line was out the door and down the steps. Aunt Neese, your "#1 Ridley