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The little girl with the shy smile, came over to me, standing in the kitchen. Her sticky fingers grabbed my hands and led me to the dining room table where the family was singing Happy Birthday to her soon to be little sister.
She sat in the tall wooden chair and put my hands on top of it and said to stay there behind her.
The birthday girl’s Mom brought the My Little Pony cake in, as the familiar song rang out with happy smiles all around. 🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶
As I watched the plume of smoke rise up from the candles, I felt the tears stinging my eyes.
This was my little 6 year old granddaughter; who I managed to see a few times a year, despite living hours away.
These people were mostly her new family, of my youngest son as he forged into a new relationship and new life.
The previous life held my eldest son, the family business, and all my other happy kids and grandkids.
As the grey smoke disappeared into the abyss, my eyes clouded in tears as I thought of the irony of that smoke.
The sweetness of life swirled up in the yummy pink fluffy frosting. The colored candles of adventure dripping with melted wax. The lightness of the flame flickering, taunting. The flame is what separates the light from the darkness. When the flame extinguishes, the smoke does its dance….
And oh, did our smoke dance. Our family had now joined one of millions ripped apart with addiction, specifically opiods which not so quickly, dominoed into heroin.
We can argue all day long about who’s fault that was, but it’s clear that anyone who was remotely vulnerable to addiction had some intense marketing help.
Over 200,000 thousand Americans have been lost to the opiod epidemic crisis. The recent Sackler family lawsuit has brought to light some factors of this.
