Letter 34 – I Hope Your Outcome is Better Than Mine

 

Dear Garrett, 

I don’t know if I said this before, but when your friend’s mother came to see me, she told me that she knew what I was going through. And then she said it again. That she knew what I was going through. It took me a minute to understand what she was saying. That her son, too, was taking whatever it was that you had been taking. I didn’t know what it was. I don’t know if she did, either. It was something synthetic. It was something you got off the internet.

The police didn’t know what it was, when I handed them the vials I had found and said, take this away. They didn’t want to take it from me. It wasn’t a recognized substance. And if it wasn’t a recognized substance, they apparently had no jurisdiction over it. I couldn’t believe this. They were at the house because we had called them. We wanted to enact some consequence to what you were doing. Here is this thing, I said. Here is this thing that my son shouldn’t be having and it’s ruining our lives. Take this and please make him realize there are consequences to making terrible choices.

They didn’t. And I thought to myself, how can I show you this drug, this obviously illegal drug, and nothing happen? How can nothing happen?

I have no idea what happened to those vials I shoved into their hands. Probably nothing. I think that nothing happened. I don’t think they sought to find out what it was or how much of it was already out there. Not then.

After you died, they were interested. But what did I care by then? What was their interest to me, then? They weren’t interested when I needed them to be, and now our interests had diverged. Mine, to facing the death of my child. And theirs, I hope, to finding what it is and what they can do.

When your friend’s mother came to see me on that day, and told me that she knew what I was going through, I felt so much sympathy. I knew what it was like. And I told her, I hope your outcome is better than mine. And I hope that is still the case, for her and her son and every person out there in a similar situation. I hope that your outcome is better than mine. I really do.