This 50-year-old bride is me, an adult child with my once-teenaged-mom, and we are surrounded by my adult children. This was the last day Amy, Jamie and I had with Kyle, except for a quick hug goodbye the next morning. My mom flew home with him and had an extra two weeks, but they were hard ones, and then he overdosed and died.
This is my wife and my grandsons, Julian and Logan, who were our ring bearers during our beautiful, backyard wedding — and then, several weeks later , they returned as tender mourners while we sat shiva in the same house.
This is Kyle’s girlfriend Amber, and their daughter, Maggie, who was our flower girl.
A note on the name of my blog: I am not a member of Adult Children of Alcoholics (though I could have been and have been a grateful member of NarAnon), but I am intentionally making a play on those words.
One of my inspirations for this blog was a blog recommended to me in the earliest days of my grief, written by a musician, John Bohlinger, who lost his son, August, to drugs and has been blogging intermittently about it for nearly a decade. You can see his blog here: https://johnbohlinger.wordpress.com/