I was eager to bond with my brother on this trip—my real brother, not my junkie brother. My real brother was the coolest, funniest, kindest guy in the whole wide world.
Unfortunately, it was clear very quickly that this was not the Harris who showed up. This one had lost the pep in his sober step. He was mostly in a bad mood, sleeping late, smoking excessively. The bags under his eyes and the oil in his hair were highlighted by the iPhone screen that he held in front of his face for most of the trip. One day, in the parking garage of our hotel, he went off on an angry rant about how his boss at Parks wouldn’t promote him after he’d been there for six seasons. This was the same boss who had been extremely supportive of Harris taking as much time as he needed to go to rehab in the first place. Mike and I were caught off-guard. It was crystal clear to us why his boss has made this decision, but Harris wasn’t exactly working from a place of self-awareness.
Another day, driving into town on the bus, he was scrolling through the AA Meetings Finder app and made a comment about how stupid it was that he couldn’t just drink one beer. “I never had a problem with alcohol in the first place—I don’t even like alcohol. Why can’t I just have a fucking beer like a normal person?” He opened the app several times but didn’t go to a single meeting the whole week. When I questioned him, he swore he was sober. I was certain he wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do, so I chose to feign ignorance.
After the vacation, we went back to our lives. Weeks passed. School resumed. It was hard to be present for several reasons. Every day, I found new cracks in the walls of our house. My brother was likely back on drugs. I missed my infant child every minute of every day now that I was back at work. I had to take an impractical break every few hours to pump milk from my engorged breasts in a glorified closet. I tried to do it all. It was hard, but I tried. I cried every day.
And then everything got much, much worse.
It was 4:15 p.m. on a weekday. I remember how the sun was shining through the blinds, painting stripes of light on the kitchen table. I remember picking up the phone from the kitchen table and reading this text from my brother:
Hey I’m gonna call mom and dad later but heads up I’m checking back into rehab tomorrow in Oregon. I started shooting heroin.
My sponsor is with me now babysitting. My boss knows.
I’m fine and alive.
My heart stopped.
He was shooting heroin?
My mom happened to be at my house that afternoon. When she saw my face fall, she read the text over my shoulder and immediately erupted into wild, guttural sobs. She hit the floor and screamed, “No, no, no, no, NO!” In hysterics, she called my dad and screamed the news into the phone: “He’s gonna die, Ellison! He’s going to kill himself!” My dad, likely in shock, paused for an inordinately long time. Being a person who functions in a black-and-white world, it’s like he short-circuited and wasn’t able to process, handle, or accept this news. Harris had already gone to rehab. He had already gotten sober. The problem was solved six months ago. Why were we back at the problem? Why had the problem gotten worse? From his vantage point, Harris sabotaged his sobriety. This was Harris’s fault. He told my mom he no longer wanted a relationship with Harris. He was done. Having a son who was a heroin addict just wasn’t something he was willing to accept.
In hindsight, our reaction was strange. We all knew he was a drug addict—this wasn’t news—but for some reason, being addicted to something for which you can be medically prescribed and take with a glass of water felt more dignified than cooking dirty, brown powder in a spoon, pouring it into a needle, and injecting it into your arm or in between your toes. Now that he was shooting heroin, it finally hit us like a bold, headline in block text on the front page of a newspaper: HARRIS IS A DRUG ADDICT. HE REALLY IS A DRUG ADDICT. THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING. WAKE UP.
Harris and I talked on the phone that night. I cried. I don’t think it landed on him. I don’t think he even heard it. He was probably high.
“How did this happen?”
“It happened because I was curious, and it’s cheap, and pills are hard to come by.”
“How did you even know how to do that?”
“That part isn’t hard. There’s YouTube.”
“So, you were alone or with friends?”
“Alone.”
So, he’d been sitting alone, in his house, watching YouTube videos, and sticking needles in his arms. What the fuck, Harris? What the fuck?
At 1:47 a.m., he sent me a text.
I feel really bad about mom.
I didn’t respond until 5:30 a.m. when I woke up to feed the baby.
Yeah I can’t really sugar coat it. She’s pretty destroyed. Never seen her like that. And dad is really angry. We have all been dealing with so much pain and anxiety and uncertainty and grief with Iris. Every day is a struggle. I can’t remember the last time I went a day without crying. And now this. It’s a lot. It’s too much. I am not trying to make you feel worse or guilty. I’m just being honest because I am too exhausted to be anything else.
• • •
One of my all-time favorite photos of you and Iris was taken last summer on that family vacation to Utah. It now serves as my screen saver. In it, Iris is just six months old. It’s a crisp, sunny day. The mountains are in the background. She’s sitting in her stroller, barefoot,
