She died alone in her kitchen in a pool of blood, and now the world does not make sense. The official police investigation is “ongoing”, but the general theory is that after a year of struggling with crippling illness and waiting for a liver transplant, my niece got up in the night for a drink of water. She made it to the kitchen where she fell, hit her head, and bled out until being discovered many hours later.
Thirty days after her death, my family still has not held a memorial service. I think we’re still confused. We all keep telling our versions of what we remember about my niece’s final weeks… months… years. We keep telling ourselves that there weren’t any signs that she was becoming an alcoholic years ago. We really want to believe that we had no way of knowing she was addicted to pain killers. But the sad truth is that no matter we tell ourselves, no matter what we try to believe, Serena started dying years ago right in front of our eyes.
That’s why I have no ending to this essay. All I have is a lot of beginnings that no longer make any sense to me.
Serena was only five years younger than me. We were raised like sisters. I vividly remember the day she was born. It was a very hot September day and I had just started kindergarten. I came home from school and my father was excitedly telling everyone about the new baby. He bought me a fudgsicle to celebrate. On Serena’s first birthday I bought her a blue stuffed dog that had a bell inside of it. I used my birthday money to make the purchase, and I was so proud. Being an aunt made me feel very grown up, and using my own money to buy my niece a gift was the icing on the cake for me that day.
However, my “grown up” status didn’t stop Serena from showing me a thing or two. She had a high IQ and got invited into MENSA as a teen. Her intelligence made the five-year gap between us almost non-existent. We spent hours together talking about books, movies, music, and life, and as teens we were partners in crime. All of it was silly stuff, like using cat food to make a sandwich for one of my brothers or sneaking a radio into bed on Saturday nights after everyone in the house had gone to sleep so that we could listen to a DJ who read scary stories and played heavy metal until 2 am. I got punished for this multiple times, but as soon as the radio was back in my hands, we’d do it all over again.
The summer after I graduated from college, I moved to Ohio and Serena was with me for this beginning to my “adult” life. I moved in mid-May and a few weeks later, as soon as her junior year of high school ended, Serena joined me for two months leaving her mother back in Michigan. We barely had money to buy a snickers bar, but that didn’t stop us from going to the beach after work every day with some hotel towels we’d “borrowed” and that old radio. We’d flirt and laugh, and stay in the sun until our skin hurt, and then we’d head home for cheese sandwiches and Cambell’s tomato soup, the only groceries we could afford that summer.
Not long after, we had another beginning when I got married. A few years later, she followed suit. Her first marriage was to a man my whole family loved. When he joined our little group, the laughter seemed to triple. This was a time of beginnings for us and everything was on track. Everything was just as it was supposed to be in my mind.
Sadly, there’s a problem with beginnings that we often overlook. They mean something different to everyone, and each person has to learn how to make the most of the beginnings they receive. I thought Serena and I were both embracing this new beginning the same way. I certainly didn’t see alcoholism and drug abuse on the horizon, and no matter how many times you ask me, I will swear that I didn’t see them until a 1 am call with my sister two weeks after Serena’s death. My sister asked me point blank, did I know Serena had a drinking problem? Did I know that she had been abusing prescription drugs?
I wanted so badly to say no, after all, I’d been lying to myself all of these years. Maybe, just maybe if I refuse to end this essay, I can avoid coming to any conclusions. So, this essay has no ending. I’ll stick with my story that I knew nothing.
However, there were clues. There are always clues. My sister’s trembling voice made me remember a weekend early in May many years ago when I first started lying to myself. Despite a few nagging thoughts, I overlooked the whole weekend. I had to overlook it because good people don’t become alcoholics, and they don’t get trapped in despair and start using pain killers, right? Serena was a good person. Certainly, anything I saw that Mother’s Day weekend couldn’t have meant that there was something tragic beginning.
I had called Serena and suggested a girls’ weekend because after two years of trying to become pregnant I was fed up and didn’t want to be around the Hallmark Mother’s Day fanfare of my family and in-laws in Michigan. Serena and I agreed that we should have a fun weekend together instead, so I planned to drive out on Friday. She told me that she had to work until 3:00 pm, so I spent that day meandering to her house. It was a five-hour drive from my home in Michigan, where I had recently moved, to where she lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. I ended up stopping at a mall along the way and I didn’t arrive at her home until 7 pm.
Something was wrong from the moment I arrived. Her usually upbeat, supportive, and funny husband was quiet and seething with anger. He wanted to know why Serena had taken the day off of work if I wasn’t going to arrive until evening. She told him that I had said I was arriving at 10:00 am and that my late arrival was a surprise to her. That was a complete lie, but I didn’t want to cause further trouble, so I kept silent. Later I found out that had she gone to work that day, her quitting time was 5:30, not 3:00. For some reason, she had taken the day off and yet didn’t want me there until after 3:00 pm. And then there was one final twist. As Serena and I went out the door to get ice cream that evening, William looked at us and said, “Think you’ll be sober this weekend?”
I don’t drink. I don’t even have a glass of wine with dinner. While I knew that Serena would drink a glass of wine or a beer, as far as I knew that was only on a special occasion, so I immediately took William’s comment to be a joke. I laughed, but I know I saw something in her eyes.
Not long after that weekend, I got pregnant with my first child. Then mid-way through my pregnancy, Serena got pregnant as well. Everything seemed on track. William and Serena were laughing again, and we were all off on another lovely beginning. I desperately wanted this to be true for us both.
Then she began skipping doctor’s appointments. Someone as smart as Serena certainly knew how important prenatal care was, so I tried to understand. No, actually, I didn’t. What I tried to do was make this lovely beginning become a happy ending the only way I could comprehend it. So, we went from talking almost every day, to speaking only once every few weeks. Then came the bombshell: She had left Cincinnati. She left the new home she and William had purchased. She left her family doctor, her friends, her job, and William.
Serena moved to Washington, D.C. to be near her old friends from the Air Force, Dan and Connie. I’d heard their names, but she’d never really mentioned them until AFTER she left Cincinnati six months pregnant and without her husband. William did eventually follow, but he wasn’t happy. They were now both unemployed and Serena was still not seeing a doctor even in Washington, D.C.
I was completely dumbfounded. But this was Serena, right? Intelligent, funny, caring. Serena couldn’t possibly have been addicted to the painkillers she had gotten from her doctor when she injured her back. That wasn’t a beginning I was willing to process.
After her son was born, Serena waited 24 hours to call her mother who lived in Michigan. I convinced myself that she simply wanted private time with her new family. I truly wanted to believe that. I certainly didn’t want to believe that in an effort to hide her addictions she planned to go home from the hospital after giving birth before her mother, a registered nurse, could interact with any of the doctors or nurses who treated her.
Shortly after Nicholas’ birth, Serena and William divorced. I took Serena’s side, of course. Even when William explained that he’d once come home to find her passed out drunk in the tub, I couldn’t accept that she had a serious problem. That wasn’t the Serena I knew.
Within a year she got married again. Her new husband was a defense contractor, who would dominate her until his death from cancer two weeks before her death. He would tell her who she could speak with, where she could go, and even what she would wear. And the whole time he’d do it with a flood of money coming from his contracts with the U.S. government. Serena had a huge home, a pool (complete with pool man), jewelry, and anything else she wanted….including all the drugs and alcohol she could handle. I would rarely hear from her except when she’d call to tell me about her lavish lifestyle.
Then a year ago, the ending to her story began crashing down on her. She called my sister and said only three words: “Mommy, I need help.” After that she collapsed. Serena had COVID and cirrhosis of the liver. Her body couldn’t handle anymore abuse. For those first few weeks, we held our breath. The doctors said that she couldn’t last for more than a month. But she did. For twelve incredible months she would battle hour by hour to reclaim her life. At first it looked like a happy ending to the trauma. She survived. It was time for a new beginning.
Beginnings are great. They’re full of hope and potential. As a writer, I’m great at beginnings. Not to brag, but in fifth grade I got a coupon for a free Big Mac from a teacher who said I had the best beginnings of any student writer she’d ever seen. Somewhere in a scrapbook, I still have the happy face sticker that came with that coupon. I love beginnings, but all beginnings have endings, and that’s where my weakness comes into play.
Some endings are just beyond comprehension, and quite frankly, I can’t end this essay. You see, this essay took me in a direction I can’t work with because good people sometimes go in bad directions. Good people take pain killers, become addicted, and get lost. Good people have broken hearts and their amazing beginnings become gut wrenching endings. And, I’m so sorry, but I can’t finish this essay. All I can say is that she died alone in her kitchen in a pool of blood, and now the world does not make sense.