I walk down to the room I think was Peter’s and remember packing up the things he left behind as he rushed home to San Diego. Back then I accepted his explanation, that it was a work crisis; now I know better.
I’m trying hard to remember if I saw any hint of what was to come, if there was something that didn’t seem obvious but should have. In his room, when we packed up, I don’t recall any signs—not one tiny round Band-Aid or individually packaged alcohol wipe. I didn’t see any orange pill vials or sterile syringes in their slim paper wrapping—those would certainly have raised some questions. I had never even seen a single-use sterile syringe up close until Peter’s death. I thought of them only in the context of medical labs and blood work and pediatricians’ offices. Now I know more than I ever imagined I would (only I never imagined such a thing). The Luer Lock tip, the calibration marks, the plunger that fits inside the barrel (which has a kind of collar on one end to keep the syringe from slipping during injections). The sharp metal needle with its beveled tip and heel at one end and little hub at the other, used for attaching it to the syringe. Such a smart little device.
I’m still standing in front of the door when I realize I can hear people inside. I’m not even sure this was actually Peter’s room but it doesn’t really matter, because whether or not it was his room back then it certainly isn’t now. My feelings are complicated, both sad for him and still angry at him. He should be here with us this weekend.
The next morning Evan and I wait with the other parents and siblings of soon-to-be-graduates for the hotel’s shuttle to The Big House, Michigan’s stadium. It is wickedly cold for late April—barely forty degrees with a driving wind and intermittent, stinging rain. Everyone is dressed as if they are going to a football game. Evan and I follow the crowd onto the bus and it inches its way toward the stadium.
I buy Anna some flowers (yellow roses with a blue ribbon, to match the university’s colors), while other parents snap up blankets, hoodies, mittens, and hats to brace themselves for the next two hours. Evan and I find our seats, which would be terrific if this were actually a football game: section 21, row 1. The field is a sea of white chairs, rows and rows of them, and in each one a black-robed-and-capped undergrad. They are a restless, celebratory bunch.
We strain to see Anna but she’s on the opposite side of the field, so Evan texts her, asking if she can come over to us for a hug and a couple of photos before the ceremony begins. She is heading our way with a friend and we start waving to them. Seeing Anna, her right hand holding on to her graduation cap in the wind, laughing, her long wavy hair falling down her back and around her face, I start to cry. I’m so overcome with pride and love, amazed that she did this after all that happened. Just look at her, I’m thinking. She graduated on time, even achieving honors in her major. “Hey, sweetie!” I say as she climbs up into our row. We hug one another, the three of us in a tight little circle.
“Mom, don’t cry,” Anna says gently, and Evan pats my back. “I’m just, I’m so emotional all of a sudden,” I say, wiping the tears. The other truth, of course, is that Peter’s absence today is so palpable it’s a presence. He’s not here, but at times like this he’s everywhere, almost more powerful in death than he was in life. It’s been almost three years that he’s been gone and yet I still catch myself sometimes, watching for him.
There are a host of speakers listed in the program, students and faculty, and then the commencement speaker, Michigan alumnus and former NFL player (and Heisman Trophy winner) Charles Woodson.
Woodson starts by talking about his glory days on the university’s football team, about running down the sideline during some big game. Two-thirds of the way through the speech he shifts focus and begins talking about the kind of person each graduate should strive to be—a person who is able to ask for help and give help when needed. He is quoting martial artist Bruce Lee, who once described his own psychological and spiritual awakening as the ability to be like water. “Be like water making its way through cracks,” Woodson is saying, quoting Lee. “Adjust to the object and you shall find your way around it or through it. Be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes that cup. If you put water into a bottle, it becomes that bottle. You put water into a teapot, it becomes that teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Those words are actually Bruce Lee’s interpretation of a poem by Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu, recorded in the 2,600-year-old text known as the Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way and Its Virtues). There are many translations, but they all more or less amount to this:
The supreme goodness is like water.
It benefits all things without contention.
In dwelling, it stays grounded.
In being, it flows to depths.
In expression, it is honest.
In confrontation, it stays gentle.
In governance, it does not control.
In action, it aligns to timing.
It is content with its nature,
And therefore cannot be faulted.
Perhaps Woodson, standing atop the makeshift stage in the end zone, addressing this crowd of 30,000-some-odd people, is suggesting this ancient Chinese poem could provide some guidance about how to live in our modern, technologically connected, and often emotionally disconnected society.
This is the world my daughter and her peers will now navigate as adults, one that is often intense and chaotic, that moves so fast it can be difficult to figure out where fulfillment lies. I know my daughter will be subject to the pressures, competition, temptations, unpredictability, and tedium that come with adult life. But she will also have to deal with things I never imagined at her age: twenty-four-hour-a-day connectivity, a dual existence (where real life competes with curated social media life), a consumptive society that often prizes—and longs for—celebrity. Her generation’s reality seems to me both dystopian and aspirational. They are well aware that this world is one of rising temperatures, heightened sea levels, and vanishing species, a world with too much homelessness and poverty. Yet they also clamor for purpose-driven work, believe dialogue is the way to solve conflicts, and that community is important. They are pragmatic and they are hopeful.
The lesson I take from that Lao-Tzu poem is to be open to change. He used water as an example because, depending on the temperature, it can be a liquid, solid, or gas. That ability to adapt is why water endures, despite an ever-changing environment. I hear Woodson encouraging these new grads to be adaptable in the same way, to go out into the world with confidence but also humility, to seek harmony, not conflict. I want to believe that my daughter and the other graduates in this stadium will do just that, stake out the high ground, think about the problems facing the world and resist the temptation of easy fixes. But I am also afraid for them. Are they prepared to do the hard work required to find satisfaction and contentment in life? To deal, without the help of a pill or powder or pot, with life’s difficulties? Will they be able to slow down and find space to think and breathe, to love and truly live their lives?
We often make excuses for the addictions and overdoses of superstars—the Philip Seymour Hoffmans, Scott Weilands, and, yes, the more ordinary superstars, the Peters of the world. How else to make sense of their choice to leave extraordinarily fortunate lives for a better high? Judy Chicurel, in a heart-wrenching essay she published in The New York Times about her son’s drug addiction, asked, “What if you don’t possess some superlative talent, if you’re not the greatest drummer or photographer or playwright who ever lived? What if you’re just a boy who’s known setbacks and heartbreak and fear of what lies ahead?” This is at the heart of my concern for all our children. Life is not easy, and life, as Chicurel wrote, “what happens, what you experience, what you choose to take in and decide to leave behind,” is the real gateway drug. Our children will need to be nimble, brave, and strong. I scan the field and take in th
ese graduates, laughing with one another, balloons tied to their chairs, sweet messages to their parents written on the flat tops of their caps, and I hope with all my heart they will be.
There is a roar of applause as Woodson leaves the stage. And then it’s over and a few minutes later Anna is beside me, smiling, holding bouquets of roses, and posing for photos with her brother, who is beaming at her. As hazy sunlight peeks through the clouds, everything feels okay. I hand my phone to a friend’s daughter and ask if she will take a photo of us. Evan and I stand on either side of Anna, our arms around her, and we smile for the camera—big authentic smiles. We are here, the three of us. We are alive and happy and together. Whatever the future holds, for this, I am grateful.
■ AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE STORY YOU HAVE just read is entirely true, based on my best recollection of events and conversations. Although many of the names used are real, others are pseudonyms requested by sources and others who did not want their identities revealed, or whose identities I chose to protect. In one instance I compressed events and created a composite character, done both in service of the narrative and to protect the privacy of several people.
FOR MY CHILDREN AND FOR PETER
■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIKE A LOT OF other writers, I always read the acknowledgments. And I always wind up thinking: How can it require so many people—and so much gratitude—to write one book? Now I know the answer. This book exists today because of far more than my efforts.
I am crazy lucky to have the extraordinary Kate Medina as my editor, the talented Erica Gonzalez as assistant editor, and a terrific team supporting me and this book at Random House. I am also indebted to my brilliant, generous agent at WME, Tina Bennett. The collective talents, intelligence, and kindness of these women left me pinching myself most days, unable to believe my good fortune.
The seed for this memoir was planted the day I was given the green light by Phyllis Korkki, my editor at The New York Times in 2016, to write the story “The Lawyer, the Addict” for the paper’s Sunday business section. When I needed to delay its completion so that I could focus on probate and helping my kids, Phyllis waited for me, all along providing encouragement and guidance. I’m proud to say that that story, which appeared in the Times in July 2017, started a long overdue conversation in the legal profession about substance abuse and mental health.
Thanks to my friend William O’Nell for talking me down from the ledge a few days before that story ran, and for everything else you did for me and my children after Peter died, which includes so much it could be a book on its own.
Thank you to Adrienne Brodeur, whom I met in a fiction-writing workshop in San Diego almost thirty years ago and have been following around ever since. Never did I imagine we would both be writing the stories of our lives at the very same time. But if not for our walks up and down Riverside Drive talking about our writing, our families, and our fears, I don’t know how I would have seen this through.
Many of the people—especially the women—mentioned in this book comprise part of a core group of friends I made decades ago and who have sustained me (and continue to do so) through the ups and downs of life. They are Jennifer Coburn, an early reader of this book and someone who makes me laugh when I most need it; Edit Zelkind, who helped me understand and correctly define complex medical terminology and ideas; Deirdre O’Shea, who provided incisive editorial feedback; and Irina Shalomayeva, Gary Swedback, Sabine Steck, Larry Tift, Joan and Steve Isaacson, Lisa and Gary Lavin, Linda Braun Leibowitz and David Leibowitz, Tana Slomowitz, Bette Brownlee, Janet Saidi, Ruth Gallant, Lauren and Dan Corcoran, Sandra Parisi, Alison and Joe Cattelona, Lisa Milos, Helen Karagiozis, Diane Wehner, Carol Coburn, and John and Dina Sarbanes. Thanks to each of you for enriching my life and my writing in so many ways.
Thanks to my mom, Charlotte Zimmerman, and my sister, Judi Quinn, both of whom let me vent early on and kept my confidences; to the world’s greatest aunt, Phyllis Schutzman, whose wise and witty emails comforted me during some very dark days; and to the extended family I leaned on: Susan Schutzman, Richard Zimmerman, Flora Haus, and Sherri and Bruce Dunlap. My love and gratitude to Denny Stone, a dear friend whose wise counsel I sought frequently.
In addition to my editors at The New York Times, I am grateful to my longtime writing and editing colleagues Joanne Chen, Elaine Pofeldt, Clara Germani, and Ron Donoho for their thoughtful conversations and encouragement; also to Reuben Stern of the University of Missouri School of Journalism for his valuable input. Thank you to the scientists, researchers, teachers, addiction counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, and other professionals who gave so generously of their time in speaking with me and who taught me about the brain, drugs, addiction, consumption, longing, suffering, and…well…humanity. Thank you to all the people who wrote to me, spoke to me by phone, had coffee with me, and provided their insights and often heartbreaking stories, and to everyone who posted in response to my queries on Hacker News and TopLawSchools.com. I am indebted to each of you for your courage and candor.
The first time I publicly told the story of what happened to Peter was at a storytelling showcase in San Diego known as VAMP, put on monthly by the local nonprofit So Say We All. I was scared to death that night to tell my truth, but afterward felt only relief and liberation, and that experience gave me the courage to keep telling it. Thanks also to the folks at Aspen Summer Words, where I got the chance, in June 2017, to work on the outline of this book with a group of talented writers.
Finally, thank you to my children, for being the awe-inspiring human beings that you are. There were so many times in the last several years when I woke up feeling as if I couldn’t face another day, when I questioned what the point of everything was, when I wanted to just pull down the blinds, block out the mess of the world, and sleep for a very long time. I didn’t though, because of you two. You are the point of everything.
■ NOTES
PART I
CHAPTER 1: APRIL 1987
“the impacts of adoption” Child Welfare Information Gateway, “Impact of Adoption on Adopted Persons,” August 2013. Retrieved from: https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_adimpact.pdf.
“has a significant effect” Linda Nielsen, a professor at Wake Forest University, quoted in Alysse Elhage’s June 15, 2015, article, “The Surprising Ways Your Father Impacts Who You’ll Marry,” in Verily magazine.
Ali, Ahmad A., and Daoud, Fawzi S. “Early Father-Daughter Relationship and Demographic Determinants of Spousal Marital Satisfaction.” Psychology Research and Behavior Management, April 2016, Vol. 9, pp. 61–70.
CHAPTER 2: AUGUST 2008
“Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati” Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is an international law firm that was founded more than fifty years ago in Silicon Valley. Today it has sixteen offices globally, including one in San Diego, which was opened in 2004 and has an intellectual property focus. Peter was one of the associates who helped open that office.
“Pythagorean theorem” A theory of Euclidean geometry having to do with the right triangle, that says the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. The theorem, as Peter explained to Evan and Anna that day, is written as: a2 + b2 = c2.
“a cover band, Blackacre” In legal writing, Blackacre is a fictitious term used to describe a piece of land. If it’s being used to distinguish one parcel of land from another, the second parcel is often designated as Whiteacre.
CHAPTER 5: DECEMBER 2014
“the signs of addiction” According to the Mayo Clinic, signs of addiction—especially those related to the drugs Peter was using—include: failing to meet obligations and work responsibilities, lack of energy or motivation, weight loss or gain, red eyes, changes in behavior, secretive behavior, money problems, difficulty concentrating or remembering, slow reaction time, drowsiness, irritability or
changes in mood, lack of inhibition, dizziness, falls, rambling speech, dilated pupils, anxiety, paranoia, nausea, impaired judgment, nasal congestion, mouth sores, tooth decay, depression, and insomnia.
CHAPTER 7: MAY 2015
“I have Hashimoto’s disease” Hashimoto’s disease is an autoimmune disorder that can cause hypothyroidism or an underactive thyroid. With Hashimoto’s, the body’s immune system attacks its thyroid, damaging it so that it can’t make enough thyroid hormones. One of the hallmarks of the condition is weight gain.
“a prescription for Synthroid” Synthroid is the brand name for a drug used to treat an underactive thyroid—one that isn’t able to make enough thyroxine, the thyroid hormone. Synthroid is the brand name for the generic FDA-approved drug levothyroxine sodium.
“substance-induced mental disorders” The toxic effects of drugs can mimic mental illness and make it hard to distinguish them from an actual mental illness. These substance-induced disorders can include delirium, persistent dementia, amnestic disorders (loss of established memories and of the ability to create new ones), psychotic disorder, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorder.
“angry and jacked-up” Childers, Linda. “Mary Forsberg Weiland & Bipolar Disorder,” May 7, 2011, bphope website. https://www.bphope.com/my-story-rock-solid/.
CHAPTER 8: JULY 8–10, 2015
“something called hematemesis” Walker, Kenneth H., Hall, Dallas W., and Hurst, John W. Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations, Third Edition. Boston: Butterworths, 1990.
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