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, wearing a fuchsia, chevron-patterned sun hat. In one hand, she holds my scarf; in the other, she covers your mouth with her tiny hand. You are kneeling down, leaning over the side of the stroller. Your face and neck are covered by scruff. You’ve got that scar over your eyebrow from the time when you were two years old and fell face first on the back steps of our house in Oklahoma. They were red brick. You got a gigantic, gushing gash over your left eyebrow that left a permanent scar. As you were bleeding out in your car seat, I was searching my room for my pink jelly shoes. I’d tracked down one but not the other. Dad came in shouting at me to get in the car. I tried to explain my predicament, but he scooped me up before I could track down the other one, and I went to the hospital wearing one shoe.
On your head rests your blue, Just Be Cool baseball cap. You’re wearing dark Ray-Bans, but I can see you staring into her eyes from the side of the glasses. And she’s staring right back into yours. You are both totally relaxed and at peace. Neither of you is aware that someone is permanently capturing this moment that will eventually sit on a screensaver. This makes it the best kind of photo.
Sometimes I clear all the windows from my desktop and trace the outline of your nose with my fingertip. You had the perfect profile—such a perfectly shaped nose. It took you a while to grow into it, but when you did, the ladies lined up. You used to say every girl had, at minimum, a 20 percent crush on you.
15
Five Months, One Week, Two Days
At the end of July, a popular media outlet is gracious enough to post the results of your autopsy all over the internet before our family is even notified that the report has been completed. And now hundreds of people are flocking to the Facebook comment thread to post things like “He deserved it,” “What an idiot,” “He’s just a junkie,” and my personal favorite: “Anyone who sticks a needle in their arm deserves to die and elicits no sympathy from me.”
My heart beat ramps up, my face gets hot, and I want to respond, “You are correct, person on Facebook: there is truly no sympathy from you. No bad things will ever happen to you. You will never experience pain and suffering. Your life will always be as it is: idyllic. Continue to sprawl out on your puffy, white cloud eating cotton candy and grapes from the vine as you look down on the rest of us.”
But I don’t. Because what’s the point? It won’t change anyone’s mind. No one’s come here to try to understand the complex nuances of addiction. Rather, I’ll post something heartfelt and sincere that I work really hard to craft, only to get bombarded with notification upon notification of even shittier, even more insensitive comments. It’s the fucking Wild West. There’s no place for empathy and understanding; it’s all jabs and tirades and vitriol with no consideration of who’s on the receiving end, being told her only brother was a junkie who deserved to die.
I mean, who are these people? Did they not go to elementary school? Did they never learn the Golden Rule? This variety of internet hatred lodges itself so deeply under my skin, like a parasite. How can fellow human beings hate-post so casually about things that seem unfuckwithable? Like you. And Iris.
Another thing you’ve missed is my newfound political activism. These last couple of months, in an attempt to find somewhere to displace my rage, I’ve been fighting for insurance coverage of children’s hearing aids in the state of Texas. Even though every single medical professional we’ve encountered since Day One of Iris’s diagnosis has continued to stress the importance of technology and early intervention for speech, language, and brain development in kids who are hard of hearing, hearing aids are considered “cosmetic” and cost up to $6,000 out of pocket every three to five years. You know this because I complained about it relentlessly when you were alive. It’s maddening.
Earlier this month, we lost the legislative battle for a number of reasons—chief among them: life isn’t fair—but I recently wrote a scathing op-ed for the Houston Chronicle about the inefficacy of the Texas Legislature. In it, I mentioned that hearing loss is often genetic, so many families have multiple children in need of the technology, which is a heavy financial burden. In the comments section, a true internet angel posted: “If it is genetic don’t have children!!!” Then, another commenter echoed her sentiments: “That is what I was thinking, adopt.”
Can you motherfucking believe that shit?
I mean, clearly they’re right! I never should have had my healthy, beautiful, sweet, hilarious, smart, loving, perfect two-year-old because she has hearing loss. Every other person in the history of the world is genetically perfect. What a bummer for us!
It’s just so carelessly brazen and devoid of empathy. Is it not in the realm of possibility that an internet troll could love someone who is born deaf or who chooses to stick needles in their arms? Isn’t that what empathy is? Putting myself in someone else’s shoes with the knowledge and awareness that I, too, am human and, therefore, susceptible to this tragedy or any number of tragedies along the way?
Maybe people are just shitty. Or maybe it’s the internet’s fault. Or maybe people are just shitty and it’s the internet’s fault.
Regardless, I wish you were still here and not the subject of an autopsy report that was recently posted online for internet trolls to feed on.
I email the detective who called me that beautiful day in February to tell me you were dead. I ask where I can obtain a copy of the report and why we weren’t notified. She responds quickly, informing me that it’s public record now and I can go online to their website and order one for twenty-six dollars, like I’m renewing a driver’s license. I think about emailing the author of the recently published article and asking if I can just borrow his.
I buy the report even though it won’t be groundbreaking news. You died of a heroin overdose: case closed. But reading all of the online commentary about you brings it all back to that first week after you died. Having to see the tragedy unf
old in public the first time was hard enough. I don’t want to do this again.
• • •
When the big, yellow envelope arrives in the mail one week later, I set it on the counter where it sits all night underneath an Anthropologie catalogue while Mike and I drink a bottle of wine with a friend. Just glancing over at it makes my heart bang around in my chest and my hands shake, and I want to throw it away or send it back or pretend it never came. But I can’t. When our friend leaves and Mike steps outside to walk the dog, I finally have a quiet moment to sit alone on the bed and spill my tears onto a fourteen-page report over your dead body.
From the anatomic findings and pertinent history I ascribe the death to:
Acute heroin intoxication.
Anatomical Summary:
Pulmonary edema.
Focal 5—10% atherosclerosis of the LAD coronary artery. Other coronaries are clean.
There are many medical terms I have to Google.
There are several diagrams, one outlining the rigor mortis scale of various body parts during the detective’s investigation. The scale is from 0 (Absent/Negative) to 4 (Extreme Degree). You were at a 2 across the board.
There are checklists and columns of body parts and organs that were “dissected,” their respective weights (in grams), and whether or not they were within normal limits.
Right lung: 655 grams
Left lung: 675 grams
Spleen: 340 grams
Liver: 1750 grams
Right kidney: 130 grams
Left kidney: 130 grams
Heart: 325 grams
Brain: 1350 grams
There is a toxicology report: Opiates. All opiates.
There is a case report with stuff like “911 was dialed and LAFD pronounced death on scene at 1200 hours without medical intervention” and “No foul play was suspected.”
There is a detailed report of how your body was positioned on the floor and where abrasions, punctures, and bruises were found, along with a description of the “scene” (they call it a scene) that reads like stage directions from a play. There’s something almost poetic about it.
The scene was the living room in a northwestern area of a single-story residence. The decedent was observed supine on a rug adjacent to an L-shaped sofa. A white paramedic sheet was partially covering the decedent. A lighter was grasped in his right hand. A backpack on the floor of the living room contained a ‘Narcotics Anonymous’ book.
There was no evidence of end of life activity or suicidal notes.
He had short brown hair, brown eyes, beard, mustache, and natural teeth. He was clad in a white t-shirt, brown pants, blue socks, and a brown belt. Blood was emitting from the nose and mouth. His jaw was clenched with the tip of his tongue between his teeth.
His jaw was clenched with the tip of his tongue between his teeth.
On 2/19/2015 at 1515 hours I notified the decedent’s sister, Stephanie Wittels, of the death via telephone.
16
Six Months, One Week
Despite how shitty I feel, life events keep happening as life events do. Not long after the autopsy report is released to the public, we move out of our tiny, cursed, ceiling-falling, foundation-shifting, mold-inducing, rodent-infested house. The new house is significantly bigger and newer and generally nicer. I’m not afraid to walk into the kitchen at night in bare feet. I’m hoping we’ll have a fresh start. The attic has been converted into a third-floor playroom that we will soon paint from floor to ceiling with giant jungle animals. There’s a place to put all of Iris’s things. There’s a place to put all our things. We finally clean out the storage unit, and now there’s a place to put all your things.
The gorgeous, mid-century modern chest of drawers that sat in your entryway now lives in my dining room. The bottom-right drawer is stuffed with all of Iris’s artwork from her little Montessori preschool. I keep thinking I need to do something more with it, but I’m not crafty, so there it sits. Iris pulls all of it out to show Momo and Bapa whenever they come over. She’s proud of her work. She calls it her “work.” Montessori lingo is adorable.
Your two cushiony, vintage chairs that spin around and swallow you up sit in our living room on top of the enormous shaggy rug where you lay dead six months ago. I thought about throwing it out, but I just couldn’t part with it. It’s not even particularly nice. I actually think you got it at IKEA. But it was yours. And I like to be surrounded by you. Sometimes I lay on it, too.
Upstairs in our bedroom are two more mid-century modern chests of drawers and the epic, wood-grained lamps that hugged either side of your bed. The TV in our bedroom sits on the same piece of furniture you used.
We are surrounded by you.
Most of the art that hung in your house now hangs in ours:
1. The giant painting of the boat sailing through choppy ocean waters that hung above your fireplace now hangs in our foyer.
2. The colorful ink drawing with all the little triangles and swirls and dotted lines and geometric shapes hangs across from the painting of the boat.
3. The large Johnny Carson painting is above our kitchen table. I imagine that you got it from a yard sale. It has a very yard-sale vibe. Johnny Carson obviously looks nothing like Mike, who has dark brown hair and a full beard, but Iris always looks at the painting while we eat and says, “Daddy!”
4. Above the stove hangs the hand-carved, wooden State of Indiana with the star over Pawnee. The engraving on the back says For 125 Episodes of Love, Chuckles & Breakfast. We Love You Forever. The Cast.
5. The scratched print of the pop icons is in the dining room.
6. The collage of butterfly wings is on the landing of the stairs.
7. The what-we-believe-to-be-David-Choe piece is in the hallway right outside of Iris’s room.
8. I framed those neon-colored prints that were collecting dust in your desk drawer and hung them in her room. I have no idea why you had them or what they were doing in your desk drawer, but they say Hello World, Excited, and High Hopes. Perfect for a little being with her long life stretched out before her.
9. The Japanese landscape made of stones and rocks of varying shapes, sizes, and colors that used to hang in Grandma’s house, the one you laid claim to when we were cleaning out her house after she died, now lives in our living room. This is what happens in families. You just pass shit down and around when people die. I remember being pissed at the time that you got that piece. And now I have it. It all feeds into the same stream.
The move, like any move, involves taking stock of what needs to go in a box and what doesn’t. File cabinets are land mines for the grieving. Folders full of keepsakes and birthday cards and happy times captured in actual photos that you can hold in your hands. These feel so much sadder than the digital ones.
In a folder titled Miscellaneous, I find a letter you wrote me from Blue Star Camp in the summer of 1997. You were thirteen and not into capitalization. A regular e. e. cummings.
dear steph,
they have computers so i decided to type u a letter. camp’s cool. i hooked up with monica again but i haven’t done anything u wouldn’t do. 311 is o.k. how’s big ben? i miss a good ass whoopin every now and then. how’s houston? we went to carowinds. it’s like a white trash astroworld. it was really fun. i met a lot of new friends. one is matt. he lives in l.a. i want to go to his bar mitzvah with benji really bad but i doubt mom and dad will let me. are mom and dad getting it on every night because i’m at camp? i went bowling and pissed some carolina hicks off. i have to go to basketball now but i’ll see you in a week n a half. i love u.
love, harris
At some point along the way, you got into the habit of starting notes or emails with Dear Sister, and signing them Love, Brother. I’ll never see that again. No one else in the world can ever sign a letter to me that way.
When you lose a sibling,
you lose a huge piece of your identity.
Your history.
Your context.
It’s the loneliest feeling.
17
Before
August 2014
The day after Harris informed me via text message that he had started shooting heroin, he went back to rehab for another thirty-day stint. The first rehab was in Malibu; the second one was somewhere in the middle of Oregon. His AA sponsor got him in.
From what I could glean over the phone and via email, he seemed to be doing the work, but I got the impression that the program felt like work this time around. His voice was less animated and enthusiastic than it was at rehab number one. The novelty of rehab had worn off. Part of the issue was that he’d gone from the Ritz Carlton to the Holiday Inn. It was no longer a spa retreat. No gourmet chefs or ocean views included. The last rehab had the glisten of newness, hope, and promise. This time around, he checked in already feeling like a failure. At the last rehab, he was a shining star. His therapist reported to my mom over the phone one day that only one (maybe two) out of the twenty that were currently enrolled would remain sober once they got out. Those were the odds. Pretty bleak. But she anticipated that Harris would be one of the lucky few. He was just so committed to doing the work. She could see that he really wanted it, that he was genuinely invested in staying sober.
At the end of the thirty days, my mom flew out to Oregon for Family Weekend, alone. My dad didn’t want to go. Again. He’s not a feeler by nature, so when things like this come up, he shuts down. He did the same thing to me when I was fifteen and made a significant error in judgment. He ignored me for weeks and neglected to see that I hated myself enough for the both of us. He didn’t have to take any of the blame—I had it all covered. At the time, I wanted so badly to grab him and hug him and tell him I was sorry and that I loved him. But I didn’t, and neither did he. Time passed, it was swept under the rug, and we moved forward.
Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful Page 9