title

I have a friend that is almost my age; only 4 years younger. She was a beautiful young lady. She graduated from High School, married and had three boys. Her oldest son is 18 months older than my youngest. We lived in different parts of the state and only saw each at weddings and funerals and such. Well, two nights ago, we got a call from her. She was in town and wanted to come by and visit. This was unusual. She had not been to our home in 25 years. Of course, we gave her directions and waited for her to arrive. When she did, it was very strange. A car pulled up and she got out, then the car drove away. The woman who came into the house was someone I did not know. She was very thin, maybe 90 pounds on a 5’5” frame. Her hair was mostly gray and her jeans were falling off of her, and she had no purse or luggage of any kind, not even a sack. Now this was a girl who had grown up with only the best of everything; the best clothes, the best shoes, the best hairdresser. This girl could have gone to the best college, or been anything she had wanted to be. Her parents had bought her a home and furniture to go in it. And not just any furniture; her mother went to Dallas to pick it out and have it shipped to her new house. Her kids wanted for nothing. Just this year, her parents had bought the two older boys new vehicles. They paid for their college and living arrangements while they were at college. But when she arrived at my home, she was dirty. Her skin looked dirty and her clothes were dirty. We visited and I fixed supper and she ate more than I would have thought possible. She then went into the living room and had coffee while I cleaned the table and did the dishes. My daughter Sarah was also there so she sat in the living room with her. As it turned out, the person who dropped her off was just some guy she had met named Bill. That’s all she knew about him so that was all we knew about him. We have decided that it must have been someone who picked her up while she was hitch-hiking. We visited a while then she asked if she could stay the night. We couldn’t just turn her out without a place to stay or a place to go or any transportation. We have a sleeper sofa in our family room, so it was decided that she would sleep there. I found her a gown that wouldn’t fall off of her and washed all her clothing while she was wearing the gown. This whole visit was so unusual that we decided that maybe we should call her parents and find out what exactly was going on. Her parents told us that she was not the person she had once been; our friend was a meth addict. She has been living on the fringes of her family for years. They did not know where she slept or how she lived. They did keep food and clothing for her in their storage shed so that she would not go hungry and possibly freeze to death during the winter months, but she would not live with them. Her marriage had ended in divorce when her children were small and she had remarried, but that had also ended in divorce. Since the second divorce, she has had a problem with meth. They were not sure if the problem started during the marriage or after it ended. She had received a very large settlement from her last divorce, including a new truck and more than $200,000 dollars. All of it gone, including the truck, within months. They believe she traded the truck for drugs. Her teeth were gone; her teeth had rotted so badly that the dentist had to spit her gums and dig what was left of her teeth out. She now had dentures because the meth had eaten her real teeth away. Her parents had done every thing, including going to court to try to have her admitted to a treatment center, that they knew to do in order to help her. Nothing had worked. While she was in my home, she seemed normal, unless we stopped talking. If there was a lapse in the conversation, she would start picking at her cheek and talking to herself, sort of a mumbling that we couldn’t understand. At one point, we just let her go to see if we could understand anything. My daughter and I both sat beside her leaning toward her trying to understand what she was saying, and she just didn’t notice at all. It was such a sad situation. I was afraid to go to sleep that night. Poppy or I was awake all night. At 2 am, she came into the dining room, where I had the laptop set up, and just sat there. I offered her something to drink and she has a soda then went back to bed. I don’t know if she had just woke up or if she was looking to find something to steal and sell for drugs. Anyway, the next morning we took her back to the town she came from, Poppy’s home town. On the way, she barely said a word except to herself. As we got closer to the town, she wanted out of the car. She insisted on being let out of the car about 15 miles from her home town at a gas station. She had no money, no clothes other that what she was wearing, and no place to stay. We tried to get her to let us take her to her parents’ home, but she refused. We couldn’t offer her money because we knew she would just spend them on drugs. It broke my heart to just drop her off, but she insisted. Nothing we could suggest was acceptable to her. I can’t help thinking what if this were my brother or child or grandchild? Would there be any way to help them. If I had the money that her parents had, surely I would be able to find a way. I don’t know.