October 24, 2024, marked six years since Dr. and Mrs. Whitlock’s son Harrison died. Though the Whitlocks still grieve, they do not grieve “as those who have no hope” (I Thessalonians 4:13).
After Harrison died, he lingered long enough to brew a pot of coffee.
Earlier that day, he visited us from Paducah, KY, where he had been “trudging” the “Road of Happy Destiny” with others on the sober journey. Harrison had moved out of the treatment facility where he lived and, with his sponsor’s guidance, found full-time employment, with a promotion and full benefits imminent.
Lori and I finally breathed a sigh of relief. Harrison seemed steady, centered, and moving forward. It had been a ride: two years “in the madness,” as those in sobriety describe their time before hitting “bottom.” For Harrison, it took four treatment facilities, life on the streets, and finally, incarceration. Then, at CenterPoint Recovery Center for Men in Paducah, KY., Harrison began finding himself.
He was stable enough to come back for a visit. Returning home had not been an option: old connections were too tempting.
He arrived home before we did, and by the time we arrived from work, he had installed a new shower head for our bathroom. I grilled him a steak and let him choose the restaurant the next night. We relaxed by watching one of his favorite TV comedies, Schitt’s Creek. The next day was the church’s chili cook-off, so Harrison helped us prepare our contribution to the event: a pot of chili.
I felt at peace because he did. Harrison was enjoying family, and it appeared that he was claiming the promises of sobriety.
Before retiring, Harrison proudly presented me with a pound of coffee he had bought with his money. Earlier in the day, he had met a friend at a coffee shop in a nearby town. “I think you’ll like it. It’s strong coffee,” he grinned, knowing my penchant for dark roast.
Little did we know that his meeting with a “friend” would prove fatal.
Sometime in the night, Harrison took heroin. That’s bad enough, but this hit, unknown to Harrison, was laced with fentanyl.
I smelled it; I know I did: that freshly brewed pot of coffee. The aroma woke me, and glancing at my phone, I saw it was 3:17 a.m.
Half-awake, I asked Lori; she said she smelled it, too. But really, I wasn’t surprised: Harrison had always been a night owl. So, smiling at the thought of him getting into the coffee he had bought for me, I drifted back to sleep.
When I got up, the coffee pot appeared unused, as clean as I had left it the day before. And the new bag of coffee was unopened. I was puzzled.
I thought I would ask Harrison later when he got up. That time never came, for we found Harrison’s lifeless body slumped over in his bathroom.
I knelt by the paramedic: “If only I had gone upstairs to check on him when I got up at 6 a.m. Maybe I could have called 911, and maybe Narcan could have saved him.”
At that moment, I was pulled into the choir no one wants to join, where grievers sing the ancient lament, “I should have…” accompanied by the never-ending chorus, “What if?”
“I think you would have been about three hours too late for that,” the paramedic remarked. I quickly did the math: had Harrison been sending me a distress signal at 3:17 a.m.? Was it a message from God, waking me, calling me to action? Or was it Harrison’s way of saying “Goodbye” as the angels escorted him home?
I will never know this side of eternity.
Standing stunned in Harrison’s bathroom, the paramedics by then having left with his body, the warm tears I felt streaming down my face were the visible overflow that the shame of inaction was drilling into the deep recesses of my soul.
Later, I would find solace in God’s Word, in the many promises comforting those walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
But not then.
That moment,
was stuck
hugging death,
where comfort is a distant stranger,
where the only companions
living
are the haunting questions
with
no
answers.