Once she got him checked in, she headed back to Houston feeling relieved and a little more at ease. Third time’s a charm. Or three strikes, you’re out. No one was sure which it would be, but we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. It was hard to stay hopeful after two relapses, but we wanted him to get better and hope was really our only option. If we were godly people, I guess we would have prayed. But we weren’t. So, we hoped. We mostly hoped he could start to love himself because that was the only way any of this would stick.
When my mom checked him in, they put him in the detox facility instead of the sober living facility, which didn’t make any sense. He’d already gone through detox when he was home in Houston. I saw it. He was sick, and he detoxed. He’d been sober for two weeks now. Why another detox?
• • •
It’s so clear in hindsight. He relapsed while my mom was staying at his house. Going through his texts, months and months after he died, in the middle of the night while lying next to my sleeping husband, I found a text he sent to a friend at one in the morning the night before he checked in: I had two clean weeks and just relapsed because I wanted a last hurrah and now I’m like why the fuck did I do that.
He put in all that hard work for nothing. We had all those conversations for nothing. My mom flew all the way out there to make sure he was safe, and he used anyway. What a shitty, fucked-up, selfish thing to do.
His friend replied: Don’t beat yourself up, pal, relapse is part of it, but you’re playing with fire. Harris asked her not to tell his ex-girlfriend, the one who contacted me in November over Facebook to tell me about the relapse at the Phish show: She will tell my family and then they will no longer speak to me. Then she told him to get out of LA. We said the same thing. That’s all we wanted.
Would it have made a difference?
33 Ten Months, One Week
Back in July, Mom and I anticipated that our first Christmas without you would destroy us—again—so we booked an Expedia trip to some gigantic resort in Playa del Carmen with a pirate themed-water park for kids and all-inclusive alcohol for parents. The idea was to put distance between us and your absence, but you only come into greater focus on our first family vacation without you.
We all fly to Mexico the day after Christmas. The most magical part of the trip is the moment Iris sees the ocean for the first time. It will forever be cemented into my memory as one of those glorious life moments that makes you feel lucky to be alive. I haven’t felt much of those lately, so I treasure this one. First, she feels the sand between her toes and giggles. She keeps digging them deeper and deeper into the earth. When she looks up from her feet and spots the ocean, her eyes light up and her jaw drops open and she looks at me as if to say, “Mama, can you believe this!?” She runs right toward it without hesitation. As soon as her toes touch the water, she rips off her shirt and pants and stands there in a diaper, in the ocean. She laughs and laughs and laughs. An expression of sheer joy.
I think, God, why are you not here to see this?
Iris is about the same age as you were in that home movie from 1986, where you, me, Mom, and Dad are all standing together on an overcast beach in Galveston, Texas. You’re wearing a bright yellow shirt and blue-and-white-striped overalls with a red fire truck on the front. The wind is fierce, so Mom and Dad have to keep shouting back and forth at each other, narrating the scene for the camera.
“Are you filming us?” Mom asks.
“Who are you?” Dad jokes.
“Oh, we are your wife and two children. We’re in Galveston.”
He focuses the camera on me. “What’s your name, little girl?”
“Stephanie!” I shout.
He focuses the camera on you. “What’s your name, little boy?”
“Tell him, Harris,” Mom urges.
But you keep wandering away from the camera, so distracted by the water. You jump up and down and make splashes that are taller than you are. I follow you as you zig-zag and dance in and out of the water. Mom shouts, “Hey, guys, stay over here!” She reaches both her hands out to pull us closer to her, to keep us safe. This is a mother’s instinct.
“Harris, come here,” she demands. “Stephanie, out of the water, please!”
Dad says, “Show me the ocean, Harris. Where’s the ocean?”
You point to the vast, brown body of water stretched out before you with wonder in your eyes then pick up dead crabs off the wet sand.
• • •
With the exception of the lack of free Wi-Fi (which is total bullshit), you would love this place in Mexico. Dining options boil down to several all-you-can-eat buffets—your favorite. There’s always an ample amount of boiled shrimp you would have “tore up,” as you liked to say. You used to pile your plate high into a food mountain at any buffet, take a few bites, leave the rest, and go
