Guilt

It’s been two weeks since my son passed and I’d like to say that it has gotten easier, but it has gotten worse.  Once the disbelief of him dying passed, I started looking for reasons why, and the arrow points to me.

About two years ago, I was prescribed Percocet for the pain I was experiencing in my right foot due to a serious infection.  I’m scared to death of opioids, but I had to do something because the pain was keeping me from sleeping and I was losing my mind.  For almost a year, they were working and I was getting close to telling my pain management doctor that I didn’t want the pills anymore.  Around that same time, Connor had a break down at work.  You see, he was working as a nurse at ECMC, the only level 1 trauma center here in Buffalo, to get the experience necessary to go back to school for his CRNA degree.  ECMC is the worst of the worst and he saw it all and it ended up being too much for him so he left the job.  He spent close to six months in the house, struggling to come to grips with his choice in profession.  He finally felt good enough to go back to work, this time as a nurse in some of the local correctional facilities and he seemed to enjoy it.  He had an episode at one of the jails and went to the ground.  I’m not sure of all the details, but I know it involved a prisoner fighting with the guards.  Anyway, he hurt his back and that night he asked me for a pain pill.  I figured what the hell, he’s a health care professional so he knows about the dangers.  I also thought it would be no big deal because he had never shown an addictive behavior, so I gave him a pill and didn’t think twice about it.

Connor ended up losing that job about a month later and sank into a depression.  About a month later, he got another job working at correctional facilities again with another traveling nurse company.  He went to his first day of orientation, but when the second day came around, he had another breakdown and didn’t go in.  He called the jail and they worked it out with him to do his orientation the next week, but he couldn’t bring himself to go in when the time came.  His mom and I comforted him and let him know that he was safe here at home, and we’d be there for him.  My wife and I had been paying his car note and insurance since he left ECMC and things were getting tight financially.  Even though we tried to hide it, he knew something was up and it weighed on him.

One morning, about two weeks after the last correctional facility job, he came down to my office to talk to me.  I knew it was something big, because he never came to me to talk.  He sat there, beating around the bush for a few minutes when he finally told me that he stole some of my Percocet’s.  I asked him why and he told me that he realized they made him forget how much of a loser he thought he was and how they made him not want to kill himself.  We talked for about an hour and at the end he told me that he wasn’t going to take them anymore.  I had no reason not to believe him because all his life, Connor was honest to a fault.  He called me to come pick him up the one time he tried marijuana and on the ride home, he swore that was his one and only time.  That was 8 years ago and he never touched it again, so I just assumed he’d be that way with these pills.

One night after this, I went to take a Percocet because my foot was hurting and I realized that the bottle was light.  I counted the pills and realized I was about 10 short of what I should have.  I asked my wife and she said she didn’t take them and I believed her because she had always asked me first (she had a grand total of two of them since the day they were prescribed to me).  I asked our youngest son who also said no and I believed him because he’s pretty honest as well, but also because the kid hates taking any kind of medication.  Won’t even take a Tylenol when he has a headache.  I then went to Connor.  He claimed that he didn’t touch them, but I could see it in his face, he was lying.  It’s hard to fake a lie when you’ve had no experience doing it.

I started hiding the pills, but would still notice some missing here and there.  I knew it was him because the times the pills went missing, he was the only one in the area who could have taken them.  I was worried not only about him becoming addicted to opioids, but for his health because he was also taking benzodiazepines for his anxiety.  I knew taking these two types of medications together were dangerous, so I bought a personal safe to keep the pills in.  The problem is, the safe had keys to open it in case you lost the combination and he would find the keys.  I’m kicking myself daily now because I didn’t just throw the keys away, because forgetting the combination was no big deal.  At worst, I just wouldn’t be able to get to my pills.

About 3 months ago, I got my right hip replaced and they increased my Percocet dosage from 2 a day to 6 a day for the first month after the surgery.  180 pills were in that bottle and no matter what I did, handfuls would come up missing.  My wife and I knew he was taking them even though he denied it because of his mood.  He was happier when he took them, but at what cost?  We knew we had to do something, so when it came time to get them refilled, I told him that my doctor cut me off because they were never meant to be permanent.  I thought that would be the end of it because he didn’t even know I had them now.  I’m not sure when he figured out that I had gotten a refill, but when the police were here the day he died, they were asking us about any medications he was taking.  We told them about his prescriptions and then I thought about the Percocet’s.  I went to the safe, got the bottle and when I counted them, I realized there were 15 missing.  My thoughts went back to about 15 minutes before I told him to go get into bed and I remembered that he ‘grilled’ me about the pills.  It didn’t trigger any alarms at the time, but when I look back on it, it was the first time in about two weeks that he even brought them up.  Now I realize that he not only knew I had them, but he found a way to get into the safe again.

Here I sit with the guilt of not only bringing the pills into the house when I told myself I wasn’t going to get them refilled, knowing that the combination of an opioid and a benzodiazepine was deadly.  I’m also feeling guilty about the fact that one of the last things he heard out of my mouth was a lie to him.  I never liked lying to my kids; I didn’t want them to lie, so I tried to practice what I preached.  I don’t think he committed suicide, but I feel the guilt that many people feel when a family member kills themselves.  Everyone I’ve talked to since that day tells me that it isn’t my fault; that Connor was an adult and responsible for his own actions, but that hasn’t gotten these thoughts out of my head.

How do I continue from here?  How can I be a good husband and father to our other kids if I feel guilty about causing the death of one?  I miss him so much.