PUTNEY — The Facebook post about the young man's death hit me hard. He, who had torn all the drawers out of our bureaus and desks, dumping everything into huge piles on our dining room floor, was gone.
I envisioned him and his girlfriend kicking over and through everything, looking for anything of value, anything that would buy them the heroin they so desperately needed.
In the few minutes of looting my home, they stomped on ceramics from the 19th century and glass from the early 20th. They left footprints on family photos from the 1960s and smashed clay animals my children had proudly created in elementary school. They destroyed what couldn't be pawned or melted down.
What they wanted most was cash. They dug deeply in our sock and underwear drawers, and they spun the mattresses off of the beds. If there was any cash hidden, anywhere, their intent was to find it.
This young man's profound impact on my life cannot be overstated. He stole my grandmother's wedding silver and my great-grandmother's monogrammed flatware. He and his girlfriend stole my gold wedding band and a bracelet my grandfather gave my grandmother in 1929.
All lost to us, pawned somewhere, anywhere, for cash to buy drugs. His robbery stole my peace. His thievery caused my husband to demand that we lock our house, something we hadn't done for the first 23 years we lived here.
Because of this young man, I must carry a key, which I am forced to remember to take out of the lock at night.
* * *
I have been viciously angry with this young man for two years. Wherever I get locked out or have to dig for my key, I curse him.
I curse him and his girlfriend and the legal system that allowed his parents to put him into a treatment center, instead of letting the law send him to jail, where I ranted he belonged. Off he went into two, then three, then four rehabs, from which he departed, only to return to robbing local houses. Robbing with his girlfriend, who also managed to avoid jail.
They were spotted in town and the police warned us, but they had already taken what is valuable in my house.
Why would they come back?
* * *
Then I heard that this young man who wreaked havoc in my life will no longer be a threat. He has overdosed.
There will be a memorial service for him, scheduled by his mother, who wrote to a mutual friend on Facebook that she “is broken.”
Broken.
All the hopes she had for rehab and treatment and change have been flagrantly crushed by her son and by heroin. I don't rejoice or even feel relief. It is hard to know what to feel.
I wonder if we still have to lock our door (yes) or if anything else he stole from us might be recovered (no).
The death of a 26-year-old is devastating and terrifying, even if he is the person I have damned and cursed aloud every time I discover something else missing (the silver salad tongs and the antique earrings my great great grandmother wore on her wedding day).
I swore often, and I wanted to scream at the young man and his addict girlfriend, scream in their faces. I wanted to call them and yell.
I dreamed of seeing them driving up our road. I imagined swerving at them and ramming their car into the ditch. I wanted revenge.
I might have even joked about killing him, but I hadn't thought about his death as a fact.
News of the young man's death shook me, because he is - was - my children's age, and he knew people they know. He went to high school with former students of mine, and he knew many families I know.
He was an addict and a thief and a kid.
And he has a mother who is broken.
It is all overwhelmingly sad and final.