Let me tell you a little bit about the life and times of Chris Smith.
Chris was a brilliant, sensitive, high strung, high energy 9 year old when he left his grandparents home in SW Pa to go live with his mother in So. Florida. Now, this area, even today, is like stepping into a time machine. Nothing could properly prepare a kid like that for the urban jungle that is Broward County public schools. The kid freaked! He was just not accustomed to kids being treated the way to do down there. So he acted like a frightened 9 year old. He barricaded himself under a table and screamed.
I read the assessment report about that incident when this kid was about 19 and moving his stuff into my place after his grandma kicked him out. The assessment read along these lines; exceptionally intelligent, emotionally immature, ADD/ADHD, drug the little fucker!
And so they did. He filled me in on the back story. Every day before school, his mom would hand him his pills, some sort of potent stimulants. They made him a drooling idiot, but he sort of enjoyed the effect; cruising through the day stoned off his rocker.
I had known this kid since he was 16 and my eldest daughter brought him home as a friend. I loved this kid on sight, it was like finding a long lost relative. He was just that cool. More than that, though, even though my daughter went about dating other, less worthy boys for a number of years, even though Chris was stone cold in love with her and this made his life an acid bath, he was always her friend. She could tell him her troubles and secrets--things she wouldn't talk to me about--and Chris always found a way to at least make her laugh and smile if he couldn't make it all better. He loved her selflessly, helplessly and well. That was just his way.
Now it's true that Chris could be a pain in the ass sometimes. Dumb kids are less trouble, I guess. But Chris also had profound respect. In that picture, we'd just moved to the area and stopped to pick him up on the way to Point Park, mostly for the hell of it, but there was some kind of event going on. He was giving my youngest a tour of the garden, explaining things, that was his nature. So long as he didn't perceive an attack, he was just the kindest, most thoughtful and compassionate young man I think I've ever met. He just couldn't stand contradiction and injustice and so he found himself at odds with this fucked up old world a whole lot or the time.
At some point the schoolpeople recommended taking him off the amphetamines cold turkey. Sometime after that, Chris discovered alternate sources for the same fun drugs and more; often enough from granny's medicine cabinet. That's what got him kicked out of her house that last time, pilfering her private pharamacopia to self medicate imacted wisdom teeth because he couldn't afford the surgery and grandma and gramps wouldn't spring for it.
That was his eventual undoing, I think. Never did get any official word back, never sought it either. But the commonly accepted story is that he had a pocket full of methadone pilfered from his grandma's safe and he took those all at once. He should have known better. I think he did know better. That thought will torment me forever.
Two days later, his grandmother asked me for pictures. The only one they had for the viewing was Chris' drivers' license photo. We had plenty, so I picked one, added the dates, printed it out 8x10 and framed it.
I first met Chris' mother at her parents' house on the way to his viewing. She offered me a xanex. She offered everyone a xanex. she was doling them out like party favors. Almost everyone gratefully accpted. Later, at the surreal viewing, all the anesthatized elder relatives consoled themselves literally over his poorly dressed dead body, by blaming his drug habit and drugs in general for the tragedy. Somebody offered me a xanex. I passed. Later, at the chapel service at Roundhill cemetary and petting zoo (I shit you not!) the DARE cop turned up in uniform. All of Chris' friends had taken seats on the right while we sat with his family on the left. That had been a mistake and I realized it as this sanctimonious, however well intended, fucking pig took advantage of this best beloved boy's funeral to spam his drugwar propaganda and to openly threaten his dearest friends with stepped up pressure and harassment.
I almost puked! The good father asked if anyone else had anything to say. My daughter stood up and read partially from a prepared statement, partly ad-lib. I remember having been very inspired and very proud. I wish I could remember exactlywhat she said. I was just proud that she stepped up. I was not in a civil mood to do that atm. I was pissed off! I LOVED this boy! And here were these assholes trying to use his death to mollify their own consciences and/or further their own cause! If I had taken the podium then, I might just have alienated everyone in the room and nothing more. Vicki did me proud that day, she just told the crowd all that was righteous and true about Chris and what he meant to her, tacitly countering the DARE cop's dim and banefully limited view of Chris' too short life.
Vicki has amazed me, pulling off feats of compassion and understanding well beyond my ken. I am proud. I don't know how it happened, I believe it happened in spite of me. But it happened of my loins, and I am a proud mama! And she brought me Chris. And we couldn't save him or me because we were obtuse.
