When You Fight For Your Kid... in Understanding the Unthinkable

…you don’t give up. Ever. Drug addiction is not pretty, but the drug addict is still worthy of love.

During Nick’s last incarceration, we went to Massachusetts for a weeklong vacation. It was a good visit with my step mother as I brought her up to speed on the struggle with Nick. We got back and I was expecting Nick to be transferred to a rehab center, as planned. Instead, Nick had decided to drop out of drug court and take the felony charge.

I was so upset but understood why. Nick had been put in jail so many times that he’d already served the same time and more that he would have had he taken the felony. He felt the judge was harder on him than on the others, and in many ways he was right. Others who had slipped up just as much got fewer days and/or the choice of serving on weekends or weekdays, but Nick always got 30 days, no choices or delays.

In fairness, I think the judge was trying to save him. At one point he looked at him and said, “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. You have family that cares, you have choices for rehab, you have a college education, you were raised for better than this.”

He was right on that, but he was not right when I kept telling the judge there was something more and that Nick needed a hospital, not a courtroom. Nobody would listen. They saw Nick’s weight loss, his shaky hands, his erratic behavior, and they said I was blind to the truth.

I wasn’t. I knew my kid was deep into dangerous drugs but I also knew there was something else being missed and Nick needed a doctor. The judge let me speak my piece in court, but it was obvious he thought I was a parent in denial. At one point we were nose to nose over his desk (I’m 4’11” and he’s over 6’ and sits higher up, so he had to lean way down and my chin was barely over the desktop) and he said, “Mrs. K, don’t believe everything your kid tells you.” I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Judge, I don’t, and you should not believe everything you think.” He had to work hard not to laugh but I was dead serious and did not crack a smile.

The jail in our city is horrid. They treat visitors as if we are all criminals. Most of the guards are indifferent at best and deliberately mean at worst. The food is nasty, portions are small and the food from the commissary costs quadruple what it’ll cost you at the 7-11.

When Nick took a bad fall in the jail, they barely treated him despite an obvious injury. His guards would not let him have the wrist brace because the infirmary had not filled out the paperwork. The infirmary is a separate entity from the jail, so mistreatment can’t be followed up on. Clever, no? Jail SHOULD be a punishment, but it is not the guards’ duty to add to that punishment. I leave the guards who behaved badly to God.

Nick spent his 30th birthday in jail, despite being clean. I mailed the card early, worried that the guards would be mean and withhold it. They sent the card back because I’d only put my last name on the return address and they said I should have included my first name (this was a rule that I’d not been told about and other letters had been accepted without my first name and they could SEE the card was from “Mom & Dad”.) No worries, I thought, since I’d mailed it early, I still had time. But the card was returned a second time, this time because there was some glitter on the outside of the card. Instead of keeping the card and giving him my letter, they returned both. It hurts me to this day that I was unable to say Happy Birthday to my son on his 30th birthday. Now there will never be another chance.

Last updated September 07, 2015