I’m having a hard Mari day, and I decided to write down my feelings instead of curl up in bed as I sometimes do.

I found this photo when I was going through my iPhone yesterday. It’s probably my favorite photo of Amara because it shows the essence of who she was perfectly! This was her birthday, and she came home for dinner and cake. When I handed her the cake, she did her famous “Oooooooh,” and we both cracked up. It was one of those exclamations we both did when something was simply fabulous, and it always made us laugh.

To say I miss her so much is cliche and an understatement. I can literally hear her “Ooooooh” right now as I write this. I think she’s right beside me as I write this as well. Some days you can feel your lost loved one’s presence extra hard, and today is one of those days.

The foundation is a lot of work. I’m not complaining, but we get so busy sometimes that we forget the why…why we started, why we do what we do and why we keep going.

Then a picture like this pops up, and it all becomes perfectly clear.

God, how I miss her. And God…are you enjoying having her with you as much as we enjoyed having her here with us? I know you are.

I lean on the Lord when the sorrow creeps in, and that’s a daily thing, by the way. Some days are much more intense than others, like today.

MercyMe has a song called “The Hurt & The Healer.” I discovered it when my mom died in 2012, 10 years before Mari died. When Mari died it came to my mind. The lyrics are perfect:

“Why?
The question that is never far away
The healing doesn’t come from being explained
Jesus please don’t let this go in vain
You’re all I have
All that remains

So here I am
What’s left of me
Where glory meets my suffering

I’m alive
Even though a part of me has died
You take my heart and breathe it back to life
I fall into Your arms open wide
When the hurt and the healer collide

Breathe
Sometimes I feel it’s all that I can do
Pain so deep that I can hardly move
Just keep my eyes completely fixed on You
Lord take hold and pull me through

So here I am
What’s left of me
Where glory meets my suffering

I’m alive
Even though a part of me has died
You take my heart and breathe it back to life
I fall into your arms open wide
When the hurt and the healer collide

It’s the moment when humanity
Is overcome by majesty
When grace is ushered in for good
And all our scars are understood
When mercy takes it’s rightful place
And all these questions fade away
When out of the weakness we must bow
And hear You say “It’s over now”

I’m alive
Even though a part of me has died
You take this heart and breathe it back to life
I fall into your arms open wide
When The hurt and the healer collide

Jesus come and break my fear
Wake my heart and take my tears
Find Your glory even here
When the hurt and the healer collide

Jesus come and break my fear
Wake my heart and take my tears
And find Your glory even here.”

There are lots of whys when we lose a loved one. Losing my mom, who was 85, was tough. Losing Mari at 31 was just not fair. It was ugly and evil.

With both losses, I leaned on God and still do. I realize that He is the only one who can ease the pain. I’ll never heal completely, and I’ve told Him that. He understands and will never expect me to heal 100%.

But there is a deep hurt that, as the song says, collides with the Healer who loves me so incredibly much and doesn’t want to see me devastatingly sad. He has healed some of the pain. He also stayed by my side in the horrible depths of my sorrow right after she passed. As scripture says, He was with me, holding me and crying with me…and He still does. Thank you, my dear Abba.

As far as finding the glory in this pain, well, that’s why we started the foundation. The verses we stand on are: “You meant evil against me, but God turned it to good, in order…to save many lives.” (Genesis 50:20).

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us all in our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Corinthians 1: 3-4)

You see, I had no choice but to take the pain and try to make some good out of it. It doesn’t mean I still don’t hurt. I always will. She was a huge part of me ever since she was born, and she was one of my best friends. I know many of you reading this can relate to that.

But for today, let me miss her extra hard. Let me hear her “Ooooooh,” her “I love you, Mom,” and her “I’m so glad you’re my mommy.” Let me remember the last time we hugged and the way her hair smelled and the smoothness of her cheek when I kissed her. Let me remember the laughter we shared when we went on our car rides with no particular destination in mind. She’d hold her dog Rocko on her lap so he could hang his head out of the window, and we’d laugh at the way his long ears flapped in the wind.

Let me keep looking forward to that Great Reunion with her, when I’ll run straight to her, hug her, take her hand and dance in one of the beautiful fields of flowers with her and never, ever, ever let go of her again.

Now go find that song and listen to it. Let Him heal that part of you. It might be just a little bit, but we both know you need a little boost right now. It will bless you.

Selah

I saw Mari arrested two times. I saw or heard her being handcuffed and driven away in a police car. Both times were for probation violations. I’ll tell you a bit about both times.

She had been missing for many days. It was a cloudy day, and I was home alone. The police had been looking for her…not as in a relentless, heated search, but keeping their eyes out for her. I was worried about her, as always. It was such a hopeless and sad feeling that never went away, but I also had to be present for my other children who still lived at home.

I was doing chores around the house, and I saw a car pull up in our yard. Mari got out and was alone. She didn’t look right; the way she walked frightened me. I was also upset that she could go away for days and days and then show up, thinking she could come home and crash. Since she was a felon on the run, I wasn’t comfortable in letting her in the house, so I locked all of the doors.

I knew from her appearance that she needed help, so I called the police to let her know she was home. Of course as her mother, I wanted to let her in and hold her, feed her and let her go to bed, but this had happened so many times before, that I knew she needed more than I could give her. I was faced with a heart-wrenching decision. I knew that if she went to our local jail that she would have a chance at more treatment, something she desperately needed.

While I waited for the police to show up, I watched her try to break into the house. Her eyes had this vacant stare, but she seemed determined to get in. It was awful to watch, and I have to admit that part of me was scared of her.

I felt like I was in a movie. I felt detached from myself, and I also felt like a horrible mother. But I knew that if I let her in, nothing would change. It was very hard.

The police came, and I saw them approach her. She didn’t put up a fight. I watched them handcuff her, and they took her away.

I then sat down and sobbed and sobbed.

She did indeed get transferred to an inpatient treatment facility after this episode, and she thanked me for being tough. It was bittersweet.

The second time was the absolute hardest. She once again lived at home (I think this was a year or so after the first arrest incident at our house). She was scheduled for a Parole Officer visit, and I had to drive her, as she had lost her license.

She sat in the passenger seat, and we chatted about this and that while I was driving. Things were going pretty good at home with her, but I believed she was using in her room. I couldn’t prove it and honestly didn’t know what to do about it.

We pulled up to the parole office, and I waited in the waiting room while she met with her officer. I could hear some of the conversation but not super clear. The receptionist smiled at me as I waited.

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Amara was sick.

She came home again, but something was wrong. She was in bed for an entire day, and when I checked on her, she was writhing in pain. Her legs were curling up and down, she was on her side, staring at the wall, and she was moaning. Then suddenly, she had to go to the bathroom.

She was able to walk on her own, and while she was in the bathroom, I stood outside of the door.

“Mari, are you OK?”

“Mom, I think I have another UTI,” she replied. “I need to go to the doctor now.”

Of course…that makes sense, I thought. I was thankful she didn’t think it was anything worse. I got the keys and waited for her to throw on some clothes. In the car we went, and down the road we flew. It was a 30-minute drive to the hospital.

I don’t remember getting her checked in, I just remember that they directed us into one of the ER’s exam rooms.

I used to work at that hospital in the 1990s, and the ER sure had changed. A plethora of exam rooms surrounded the nursing station. The door we accessed was on one side of our room, and a door to the nurse’s station was on the other.

We waited. Mari groaned and was resting on the exam “table,” a cushioned and somewhat comfortable-looking bed of sorts. She kept her eyes closed, and I comforted her as much as I could.

After 10 minutes or so, a doctor came in. He was reading through her chart. He barely paid any attention to me. He sat beside Mari and asked her what was wrong.

“I have a UTI. Just get me some meds so I can get rid of the pain,” she said.

He didn’t say much after that. He glanced at me and asked who I was.

“I’m her mother,” I said.

No reaction whatsoever. He just kept staring at Mari until finally he told her to pee in a cup. Then he left the room.

Mari went into the bathroom to do her thing, and I kept standing in the same spot, not quite sure why I felt so weird about the whole thing. Why was the doctor acting so strange?

I had a feeling he knew something I didn’t realize: Mari was high. I needed to know. With Mari still being in the bathroom, I took the opportunity to open the nurse’s station side door and took a couple of steps toward the desk. I was met with two or three angry voices saying, “You can’t be in here! Get back in the room!”

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “I need to ask the doctor a question.”

“Get back in the room,” a nurse said sternly.

“Listen,” I whispered. “I need you to tell me if she’s high. Is she high? Is she?”

“Get back in the room,” was all I got.

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Surprisingly, it didn’t have that much of a reach. Maybe it was too long or posted on a slower day. We’ll try again.

The ones you see in the video are Karl and Mari. You can hear Karl’s mom, me and Randy, Mari’s stepdad.

These are the emotions that every parent who lost a child has when they discover they are gone. It happens every day, all over the U.S.

Every week, 20 high schoolers die from fentanyl. People who suffer from addiction are not the only ones dying. Wake up. Fight with us (see amararosefoundation.org).

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I haven’t become hardened to affliction or pain; I just know how to handle it better. I was at peace during Covid, too, and that was God. I took the hail destruction of my house and vehicle this past April in stride, too. I’m prepared to handle anything bad that happens in the future with prayer, acceptance and a healthy dose of “let’s go to battle” to combat the fallout. God has made me a fighter.

The story that came to mind the past few days is about Mari’s purse. Yes, I’m jumping ahead in my storyline because when a moment in her journey pops in my head, I go with that for that day.

Mari was gone. She died in an apartment in Onalaska. She was homeless and carried everything she owned in her purse and on her body. The medical examiner did her job, and Mari was put in an ambulance and eventually driven to Rochester, where she underwent an autopsy.

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I never got the clothes she wore that night. I didn’t get her coat or shoes…nothing she had on. I don’t know what shape they were in and never asked.

All I got back was her purse. It was a well-worn, gray canvas hobo-type bag. The funeral director gave it to me a few days before the funeral. It was in a large, plastic bag labeled “Personal Effects” from the morgue. I took it home and placed it in our spare bedroom and shut the door on it. I was scared of it. I was still processing the death, and opening that purse was too much for me to handle.

We had the funeral and tried to settle into our new reality. My mourning was crippling. My bed was my retreat and at all hours of the day. My eyes bore a hole into the wall opposite of the bed. I cried, I prayed, I talked to Mari. The realization that she was never coming home again was just horrible. My youngest daughter came home from school and found me in bed many times and didn’t know what to do or say. There was nothing she could say…my soul was deflated.

I walked by the other bedroom many times and could literally feel the purse’s presence, as if Mari was still attached to it. I knew opening it would be monumental but couldn’t bring myself to do it yet.

About two weeks later, on a Saturday, I made myself do it. I cleared the bed, making it clear and open and clean. I picked up the purse and laid it on the bed and sat beside it. I was shaking. The strap was worn and soft. I unzipped the zipper and peeked inside, a little bit scared of what I’d find. The inside fabric was silky and hot pink. At that moment, my youngest daughter came in. I looked up, relieved, and invited her to sit down with me if she wanted to. She didn’t even hesitate.

We dumped the contents on the bed and started exploring it all–carefully and with reverence. These were the things that Mari held dear in her last days on earth.

The contents told the very sad story of a woman who was homeless, desperate for help and struggling to stay alive…someone who missed her family and had suicidal thoughts because she felt she was nothing without her drugs.

What was inside?

I lost two high school classmates last week. Teri and Kathy were two beautiful souls who just slipped away in their sleep within four days of each other. The community is in shock; the families are devastated.

We are still doing the yard sign awareness campaign and are always looking for high-visibility spots to stake 29 signs. We know we need to expand our area into other sections of our county and neighboring counties. For now, we’ve been placing the signs mostly in Westby, Viroqua, Genoa and De Soto.

Last weekend, Randy and I tried to stake them in front of the Family and Children’s Center in Viroqua. It’s right next to the highway. We loaded up the signs and drove the short drive, inspected the yard and proceeded to stake. Nope, it didn’t work…the ground was very hard, even after a good rain the night before. We were so bummed!

We put the signs back in the car, and while Randy was pumping gas at Kwik Trip, I messaged a gal who lived in Westby and who offered her yard to us a couple of weeks back. She said, yes, she’d love the signs in the yard, but her husband needed to mow it first, so perhaps the next day, which was Sunday? It was agreed, and we went back home to relax.

Sunday came, and with it the news that Teri had passed away in her sleep the night before. I went into a slight state of shock since we had just lost Kathy on Wednesday night. What was going on? The air quality had been horrible the whole week due to the Canadian wildfire smoke. Our area was in the red for severity for most of the week, and Saturday and Sunday were particularly bad. I still wonder if that affected Kathy and Teri’s health and contributed to their deaths.

I never heard from the gal in Westby who offered her yard to us, but I also figured if it was ready, we wouldn’t put the signs up due to the air quality. She ended up messaging me later on Sunday. She had forgotten to let me know the yard was mowed and all ready. I told her we’d wait until later in the coming week.

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Kathy’s funeral was on Monday, and while Randy had to work, I was able to go. Several of my classmates were going, so we made plans to sit together. It was a hot but gorgeous day, and I managed to find a parking spot behind the church.

I walked in the church, and as I predicted, it was packed. One of my classmates saw me and showed me where everyone from the class was sitting. There were about 10 of us, and it was good to see them, as I have been skipping our reunions for the past 15 years.

I chose not to go to the casket. I wanted to remember Kathy the way she was when I last saw her a few months ago in a store checkout line. Funerals and caskets also trigger losing Mari and how hard it was to see her in hers and say that awful, last goodbye. In fact, when they brought Kathy’s casket down the aisle with the family following behind, crying, I had to hold back a loud cry as I relived my daughter’s final journey down the aisle before we brought her to the grave.

My class opted to go straight to a bowling alley/restaurant after the funeral so we could eat, catch up and talk about Kathy’s impact on our lives. We had a great time talking. I know what was going through everyone’s mind, though, while we were sitting there: Which one of us will be next? Morbid, I know, but losing two friends in four days and in their sleep really makes one contemplate their own mortality. All of us are only in our late 50s–we are too young to die.

One of my classmates’ son and daughter-in-law came in and sat down with their mother. I glanced at them briefly, and my eyes kept going back to the young woman. She was looking at me, too, then a light went on…I could see it in her eyes. “Hi!” She said to me. It took me a bit, but then I realized that it was the gal who offered us her yard in Westby.

We talked for quite a while. She and her husband were very excited about the sign campaign. They had been good friends with two of the people on the signs (Keaton and Christian). They couldn’t wait to have the display set up in their yard.

I had never taken the signs out of my car so told them I could just hand them over and they could put them up if they wanted. My suggestion was met with an exuberant YES. We left and they grabbed the signs and had them up in 20 minutes.

The really, really neat part of this is that it was the first time that Christian Peterson’s sign was part of the campaign, and it was in his good friends’ yard. That brought tears to their eyes (and mine).

Christian Peterson

When they posted the picture of the display on Facebook that night, Christian’s mom, their friend, saw it and was extremely grateful. Her son was back with his friends, not in a way she had hoped, but this was very special nonetheless.

I have always said, ever since my mom died in 2012, that death brings people together. It really does. Kathy dying brought my classmates together, enabled me to meet Brandon and Kendra and brought Christian into his friends’ yard.

Never stop looking for the small miracles and coincidences that make marvelous things happen and lift your spirits. Of course I’m not happy Kathy passed away, but a few good things happened…things that can save other people’s lives and that brought people closer together.

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It was always a shock to see my daughter clad in an orange jail suit and on court-hearing days wearing ankle and wrist cuffs. I’ve only ever seen that on TV. She was treated like a criminal. She shuffled in and out of the courthouse, and it was sad. I’ll never get that image out of my head.

I look at pictures of her when she was growing up and never dreamed that this would be in her future, as an adult. Again, unfathomable. It makes me sick. I can’t change anything that happened. If I’m looking for something that I can blame her disease on, such as trauma, I can only come up with the big move we did when she was in middle school. We moved from a middle-class neighborhood in La Crosse to my family farm in rural Coon Valley. It was a huge change for her, and maybe she didn’t adjust as well as she let on. I really don’t know.

Mari and her baby brother

But then I think about military families that make multiple moves while their children are young, and those children grow up fine, or seemingly so. One day I will know when I’m back with her once again.

The hearings I mention were status hearings, which never amounted to much. I went, always hoping they would say she could get out due to good behavior or whatever, but they didn’t. After a year passed, and unbeknownst to me, her friend’s family wrote a letter to the judge asking her to let Mari out as long as she got into some treatment. One year was punishment enough, they stated. The family knew Mari; Mari had even worked for them for a short time. They always liked her, but in their grief felt she needed to face some consequence for taking part in their son’s death.

I knew who the family was, but I had never met them. I had met their son; one day a few months before he died, I stopped in to see Mari, and he was there. They were sitting at her kitchen counter, talking. I really liked him—he was such a handsome, sweet, young man. That’s the only time that I saw him. They were very close, which made the whole ordeal even harder to take.

When he died and she knew she had played a part in his death, she was devastated. Like I mentioned before, a part of her started dying because she loved him very much, and there was no undoing what had been done. Can you imagine what was going through her head before she was arrested for her part in all of this?

I will never excuse either one of their drug use. Bad choices can lead to the disease of addiction. Both of them needed caring and understanding treatment to overcome their disease. He was actually going to treatment a day or two after his last “hurrah” that Mari played a part in.

I believe Mari did deserve some type of repercussion for buying him the heroin, but not one year in jail without any treatment. He was going to get the drug from someone—he reached out to many people that night. She was the one that said yes. He gave her the money and even accompanied her to the dealer’s house that night (as far as I understand).

While I am of course extremely sorry and devastated that he died, she was not solely at fault. His family and I have discussed this and understand this, which I am grateful for.

While Mari was in jail, Randy and I stopped going to our favorite supper club in the town Mari used to live. It was our understanding that her friend’s parents frequented that place as well, and we were scared to run into them. What would we say? What words could possibly ease their grief that our daughter helped initiate? Their son was gone, and our daughter would suffer her entire life for the part she played in her friend’s death. Soon, she would be gone, too.

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How did someone pass time in a small county jail in 2019, and not just for a couple of weeks or months but for an entire year? I’ll tell you.

My daughter read…a lot. She wrote tons of letters to us and to her many friends. She always had the gift of hairdressing, so she did many of the female inmates’ hair—braiding, mostly. She played cards with her fellow inmates. She doodled, colored (so much coloring), did crossword puzzles, played sudoku and attended Bible study once a week.

She depended on us to put money on her canteen. I used to know that website’s URL by heart; now I can’t remember what it was called. At that time, one stored their credit card information on the site, which was good for us since we were putting money on her account often.

The inmates get their three meals a day but no treats, so canteen is very important to them for the treats and extra things they might need, like a certain type of toothbrush, yellow writing paper, envelopes, stamps, or a favorite snack. Money from us also went on her telephone call account, and that’s how we were able to talk to each other when we couldn’t visit.

Most of those calls were very difficult. Plus they were all recorded, so we always had to be mindful about how personal we got over the phone. Many times, we both cried, especially on holidays and when she was going through a low point. My poor Mari.

Her favorite thing to treat herself to through canteen were honey buns. I see them in gas stations now and a wave of sadness hits me. She loved them.

They had a library at the jail, but we were able to send her books she wanted or books I thought would uplift her through Amazon. The jail accepted Amazon book packages. I swear I sent her close to 50 books, including her favorite kind of coloring books and gel pens. I still have many of her books in my bookshelf. The first thing she did was write her name inside the cover. I cherish those books.

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Toward the middle of her sentence, I stopped going to see her. Seeing her like that took a toll on me. I became sick when I got home from seeing her. Randy (my husband) did the weekly (or more) visits from then on. Mari understood. Of course, now I regret my decision.

Just briefly, fast forward four years later. I had to drop something off at the jail because my favorite correctional officer (now my good friend) joined our board and needed something from me. She wasn’t able to come to the window right away, so I took a seat across from the inmate visiting room. It was very quiet. I didn’t want to but couldn’t avoid it—I looked inside the visiting room. It wasn’t visiting hour, so it was empty. I saw the chair I sat in and the phone I used when I visited my baby, and I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.

Our vet clinic is across the highway from the jail. One can see the jail from the highway leading into Viroqua as well. I went to town 2-3 times a week. I would look at the building and think, my daughter’s in there. It was surreal. One year is a long time to be confined, and passing that building time after time and month after month for a whole year, knowing she was somewhere in there coloring, when all she needed was compassionate treatment, drove me mad.

She had a few court dates, and I attended every one. I woke up excited because I knew I got to see my daughter that day. I arrived at the courthouse early and waited in the parking lot so I could see the jail’s vehicle pull up. When I saw it pulling into the lot, I jumped out of the car and waited by the inmate entrance to the courthouse. The jail staff helped her out of the van, and Mari and I would lock eyes and both of our faces would light up. She wore her orange jail suit and was handcuffed…but she looked like a princess to me.

“Hi, Mom!” she said, and I’d smile and say hello, Mari…and then they’d hurry her past me into the entry. It really depended on who the jail staff was that day; sometimes they’d let us say more, while other times they’d give me a stern look and shuffle her past.

One time I was in the elevator after a hearing, and she and her jail guard got inside before the door shut. That was a miracle for us, as we were able to talk to each other and stand closer than ever. That elevator ride ended way too soon. She got into the van, and I got into my car and cried all the way home. I also often followed the jail van to the jail turnoff so I could be as close to her as I could, as long as possible.

During our phone calls, she asked for photos of our animals, including her dog, Rocko. When she lost everything she had after she started heroin, we ended up with her two dogs. One was Rocko, an adorable, long-haired Dachshund, and the other was Buster, a black lab mix. I sent her many photos of her siblings, our pets and her dogs. They weren’t allowed to use tape in their cells, so Mari hung up the photos with toothpaste. I have all of those photos and can’t get the toothpaste off. It’s another sad reminder of those hellish days she and we endured.

To be continued Friday…

Continued from Tuesday…

Where was she? We had all of our family and friends who lived in La Crosse keep their eyes out for her. We were pretty sure that’s where she was. It’s not that we wanted her to go to jail, we just wanted her to stay alive. But when I knew she had skipped her court date, I did get upset because I knew that didn’t help her at all.

Days and weeks passed. One night while I was in bed, her sister called me. She had seen Amara at a Kwik Trip on the outskirts of La Crosse. When she drove up to pump gas, she spotted her walking into the gas station. Amara had dyed her hair black. Amara saw her sister and ran inside as fast as she could.

I called the detective, even though it was late. He was sleeping but got a hold of his colleagues with the La Crosse Police Department to go to the gas station. I waited.

He called me back a short time later and said it wasn’t her. My daughter knew what she saw, and we were both confused, but we had to trust the police.

Years later, I learned what had happened. It was her. She carried a fake ID, so when the police confronted her inside the gas station and checked her ID, it was convincing enough, and they let her go.

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More time passed by, and then one day the detective called me. “We got her in La Crosse…I’m going to go pick her up.”

I was relieved and scared at the same time. I sat down on a dining room chair and cried. When he brought her back to our county jail, he sent me a picture of her. (I can’t tell you how hard this is for me to write. I’m reliving every moment, and it’s very hard.)

She had long, black hair. She was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and had mascara running down her cheeks from her tears. But it was my Mari.

I’ve never shared that photo of her. It’s still on my phone, and when I’m scrolling through my photos, I rush by it because I don’t want to remember her like that, and she wouldn’t want me to, either. Always and forever, my baby she’ll be, even during her darkest and most desperate moments.

This time, the leniency with the court was gone, and she knew it. We knew it. We braced ourselves for the next hearing.

One year. She was sentenced to one year in our county jail. When she entered, she had to detox in her cell. The jail’s nurse monitored her, but imagine how hard that was for Mari. No treatment or mental health assistance was offered.

When we visited her, we had to sign in and wait until they brought her to the visiting area. I’ll never forget her shuffling to the phone in her orange suit. She still looked beautiful to me. We talked on our phones and looked at each other, never feeling comfortable about saying what was truly on our minds and hearts because we knew we were being recorded. I hated it with a passion.

One day I wanted to show her a photo of her siblings and pets, so I tried to hold my phone to the window that separated us, and I was met with a stern reprimand from the correctional officer, “NO PHONES!” I got very angry.

How can I sum up a year of visiting my daughter that way? It was hell. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t fair. She was no murderer. She wasn’t a violent felon. She was someone who made a bad choice and was suffering from a disease, and she had no chance at getting the treatment or the cure she needed. She was scared and desperate and hurting. My daughter, my beautiful, headstrong, smart daughter started dying that year. She attempted to stay strong, and so did we.

Despite everything, we hung onto hope.

I have to stop here because writing this takes a lot out of me emotionally. I’ll write more about this season in her addiction journey next week.

Little Mari, 1990. Always and forever my baby you’ll be…

Randy and I were living a nightmare, but we still had to carry on as normal as possible for the sake of our three children we still had at home. We tried very hard to be optimistic around them, but they heard our distressed conversations and saw my tears too many times. Of course it affected them.

Year after year passed. Amara’s disease ebbed and flowed. Home. Gone. Missing. Home again. Gone. Inpatient treatment stays in Fond du Lac, La Crosse and Milwaukee. Hope. Dismay. Hope. Joy. Devastation and shock. How long could this go on?

Enter stigma. Our son shut down negative comments from schoolmates with a do-you-want-to-die look and a single comment: “Don’t you ever talk to me that way again.” They didn’t.

Randy and I went to our children’s music concerts and were shunned by the other people in attendance. When we walked in the performance centers, it was like the parting of the Red Sea. We sat alone with empty seats all around us. It was so painful. I tried to act like everything was fine. I smiled, said hello. We got the cordial hello back, but no one talked to us, and when we got home, I cried.

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In 2017, everything got much worse. One of Amara’s best friends died from fentanyl poisoning in his parents’ campground hotel, where he was staying. I first saw the news on Facebook the morning after he died, and I told Amara when she got home from work. She knew already, she said. She was very abrupt and went straight to her room. I was a bit confused.

I was tired from the night before; I had stayed up late and saw Amara come home from work. I knew she had gotten off earlier and wondered why she was home so late, but I brushed it off. She had gone straight to her room again, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to her. What I didn’t know was she had brought home a syringe of heroin and took it when she went down to her room.

I honestly can’t remember how many days passed, and I do not remember when she was arrested. I remember the call I got from her parole officer later that week. She said the police had done some investigating, which included looking through Amara’s friend’s phone and Facebook messages and watching the hotel’s security camera footage. It was undeniable: Amara was the one who gave her friend the syringe of heroin. They had driven to La Crosse together, met up with a dealer, picked up two syringes of heroin and returned to the hotel.

It was the luck of the draw. He took one, she took one. His had fentanyl in it, and hers did not.

The first thing I asked the parole officer was, did she shoot him up? No, he waited until she left before he used the drug.

I was relieved. I believed that she wouldn’t suffer harsher consequences due to that fact, but I was wrong.

Amara was arrested and spent some time in jail, but she was released on bond until the next court date and trial. She was released to us, but she was checking in with her parole officer every week.

During this time, we had to move from our farm, partly because of all the money we lost due to her addiction. It was devastating on so many deep levels. I still won’t drive by my lost farm.

We moved to a smaller house in a nearby town. Amara was with us, and even though her friend, whom she loved very much, was gone, we were hopeful that things would work out if we helped her follow all of the rules.

She went back to using. I was heartbroken. She also disappeared again, and at that point, I became numb. The climax of this period of her addiction journey was when she failed to show up in court for a scheduled hearing regarding the death of her friend. An arrest warrant was issued, and the search was on.

We had no idea where she was, and honestly, I was scared that she had moved far away. It was also winter, which was always the worst part of the year for her. I remember looking out of my deck door at night. The snow was flying, wind blowing, and I looked at our backyard shed and wondered if she was in there. I never checked; part of me didn’t want to know.

Police showed up at our house at random times. One night we were watching TV when our doorbell rang. It was an officer who asked if she was home. Of course she wasn’t; were they trying to catch us harboring a felon? I was royally ticked off, especially because our two youngest were with us, and we were trying to have a normal night of watching a movie.

I texted the lead investigator and told him to stop it. Stop sending your men to our house. It’s upsetting the kids—especially Amara’s little sister. He could tell how angry I was. He promised me they wouldn’t come anymore.

We still tried to function as normal, but Randy and I felt sick on the inside. When a few days passed, and Amara was still nowhere to be found, the sheriff’s department decided to post her mugshot on their Facebook page, and state and local news stations gladly helped. My daughter’s mugshot was blown up on the screen of the morning, afternoon, and 6:00 and 10:00 newscasts…for days. The stations also posted her mugshot on their social media pages. I was appalled when I read the nasty comments that people made. I sobbed. People can be so ugly and hurtful. Many wanted her to suffer and die. I even knew some of the people who made the comments and will never trust the human race ever again.

I went into the Dollar Store one night, and the girl at the checkout somehow knew who I was. She was ugly to me. Her words were full of stigma, and she treated me like dirt. I got in my car and cried.

Amara’s face was everywhere while the search went on, including in newspapers and on radio stations’ social media pages. If you looked outside of the box, this is what they really needed to be saying: “Please help us find this beautiful, young woman who is suffering from a horrible disease and needs treatment. She made a horrible decision, and we need to show compassion and love for this individual because she deserves grace, love and treatment to help her beat her disease.”

To be continued on Friday…

You don’t think these moments will ever end. You don’t realize how fleeting time is as you embrace your little ones, marveling at how the most simple things in life make them squeal with glee as they experience them for the first time.

Amara was my first born. I was only 23 when I had her. She was an unexpected blessing in my life, and I will never regret having her as a single, young woman who was trying to figure out life herself.

Amara came into my life to save me. Becoming a mother grounded me. My generation married and had children young. We couldn’t wait to marry, become mommies and make cozy homes the best we knew how. For me, I accredit that to being raised by older parents (my mother was 41 and my father was 47 when I was born). They were born in 1926 and 1920 respectively.

I was raised the old-fashioned way: three home-cooked meals a day, the Ten Commandments, Sunday School and church on Sundays, and spankings when I misbehaved. I grew up listening to Billy Graham, Perry Como and Jimmy Swaggart. I watched I Love Lucy, Walter Cronkite, 60 Minutes and Lawrence Welk. Mom was a homemaker while my dad made the money.

Being a 23-year-old mother was easy for me. I fell into it naturally, and I loved being Amara’s mommy. She was the absolute cutest little girl from the start. She slept through the night right away. She smiled early. She brought joy into my life that I didn’t know I had been missing.

Three more children followed her. She took her leadership role in stride. She was the funny sister who made everyone laugh, and they looked up to her until they didn’t. When she got sick with addiction, the family dynamics changed, and it was difficult to say the least.

As you know, she got sick and suffered tremendously until she died. She was 31 when she passed, and unlike so many other mothers I talk to, I thankfully didn’t find her. I look back and realize there were so many times she could have died at home. I know God was sparing me from that tremendous trauma of discovering my daughter’s lifeless body.

Time is a healer; I don’t cry like I used to cry, but I still cry every day, like today when I stopped and looked at the photo of us on my wedding day. She was so cute. I remember when that photo was taken. It was right before the ceremony, and my cousin told me to stand in front of a window for some candid shots.

Amara was fascinated with my veil and the flowers. We touched the flower petals, and she looked up at me with so much love. My heart was full.

It was a moment in time I will cherish and never, ever forget. How could I ever fathom that 25 years later her smooth and soft arms would be riddled with needle tracks? That her lungs, heart, liver and brain would be fighting off all sorts of foreign substances?

How could I imagine that I wouldn’t hear from her for weeks, sometimes months? That she’d be sleeping in city parks with the other homeless people, toting her backpack filled with all she owned around several towns, and driving by our house but not stopping because she was too high?

It’s just all too tragic, and my brain will often stop thinking about it as it protects me from the reality of what happened. I and every other mother I have met could drive themselves completely insane and into early graves if we gave in to what we know and can imagine.

What I do know is that this disease turned my Mari into a completely different person who I really, really tried to understand and help. I witnessed addiction consume her in stages. I fought alongside her the best I knew how or was capable of. It was stronger than both of us.

I don’t like saying it won, but I guess it did. However, I like having the last word, so I will keep fighting. I’ll keep confronting the monster that took my daughter from me. It’s still ravishing and destroying lives each and every day, and there’s a lot of work to do. I will fight until the day I die. I’m prepared for that.

Join me. I’d be happy to give you ideas that can be implemented on this battle field. We have to preserve our children’s innocence and health as long as we can. We all want to keep having those special moments with our children no matter how young or old they are. Nothing should steal that from us.

I never saw it coming. Mari twisted her ankle while walking down the path to our house one day, and after looking at it more closely, we both decided she needed to go to the clinic.

Mari was on probation at the time. She got out of jail after serving time for a probation violation, and we welcomed her home once again. We all had a fresh determination to make her sobriety a top priority, and we were trying to do everything right, which included almost daily visits to a methadone clinic (which did nothing for her, by the way…that’s another story).

As a condition of being on probation, she had to wear an ankle monitor so they could track where she was 24/7. If you’ve never seen an ankle monitor, they are quite large. The monitor is a squarish chunk of black, heavy-duty plastic with little buttons and lights on it. It’s attached to a band that is about 2-inches wide and strapped around one ankle. Yes, it’s very visible and ugly.

Kudos for her for wearing it without shame. It was summertime, and she wore a skirt, so the monitor peeked out from below the hemline.

As her mom, of course seeing it on my daughter’s ankle was a bit upsetting. No mother wants to see their child wear one. But I never made her feel bad about it. We made jokes about it, knowing it would come off one day, and what a day that would be!

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We had to have that ankle looked at. We drove to the nearest Urgent Care clinic and checked in with the receptionist. So far so good.

We took our seats in the waiting room. The room was empty, thank goodness…shorter wait time. After a few minutes, a nurse came out to take Mari to an exam room. Her initial smile faded when she looked down and saw Mari’s ankle monitor. She went cold. Her words were rude and abrupt. She was clearly disgusted.

Mari sensed it right away, and I could see her go into defensive mode. She disappeared in the back with the nurse, and I sat in shock. I wasn’t only in shock, I felt violated. Sad. Hopeless. If we couldn’t get empathy from a medical professional, who were we supposed to lean on?

My daughter was an addict. She was sick. She needed help. We were doing our best. We needed help…support…loving and kind care. If a nurse treated her like dirt, where was our hope?

Mari returned with crutches and a wrap around her ankle. The nurse gave us one more dirty look and went back to her station.

Mari was quiet as we drove home, and I tried to console her the best I could. But we both felt the ugliness linger.

Stigma is a horrible thing, and since I started the foundation, it rears its ugly head over and over again: nasty comments on our posts; event and educational posters torn down from public boards; businesses who won’t donate because they don’t want their names tied to an organization like ours.

There was one more instance in a different medical clinic that I won’t go into detail about, but here has been my experience with a few medical “professionals.” When they realize their patient is an addict, their facial expressions change. Their eyes narrow. They treat the patient with a distant formality that is either cold or disconnected. They hurry and rush to get that person in and out, almost like they can’t wait to wash their hands of it all, literally and figuratively.

It’s just sad.

Over the past 10 years I have learned a lot about humans. There are many good ones, but there are way too many cold and insensitive ones. Don’t believe me? See how some people’s true colors come out in their comments on social media posts.

I may sound harsh, but my words come from a mother who loved her daughter more than anything and vowed to see her live. Anyone who was disgusted with her, well, I hope they never have to deal with a loved one battling addiction because if they are dealt that gut-wrenching hand, they’ll see how their words and actions can make or break a beautiful soul who just wants to break free and live.

In our case, that one nurse’s behavior toward my daughter set Mari back by months. She never forgot it, either. She went from “I’m doing good and will beat this” to “I’ll never be anything but a filthy addict.”

Always be compassionate. Be kind. Be loving. Be understanding. Always.

I’m writing my experiences with my daughter’s addiction journey in no particular order, just when the memories come to mind. This one was brought to mind yesterday.

My daughter hadn’t had contact with me for weeks. I knew what that meant…she was actively using. However, I always hung onto that thread of hope that she was okay.

One afternoon in July, I got a text from her: “Mom, can you come and get me? I’m sick of this life.”

I called her back immediately, and she answered.

“Oh my gosh, Mari, where are you? Are you okay?” I asked.

“Mom, I’m good. I’m clean. Can you come and get me and bring me home? Please? I want to come home. I miss you guys. I’m going to start over,” she said.

I took her 8-year-old sister with me. We drove the 30-minute drive to La Crosse. I found the address Mari had given me and stopped on the side of the road. I saw her…she looked great, and I was so thankful.

I jumped out of the car, and we embraced. My daughter…I have her back, I was thinking. I was elated. She was so happy to see me and asked me to help her load her things in the back of the car. Then she jumped in, and we started driving, all the while talking and catching up on those lost weeks.

She had gotten in a fight with her boyfriend (who, since this happened, has also died from fentanyl poisoning), and she was done with him. She was done with the drugs, and she wanted a fresh start.

“Well, let’s celebrate,” I said. “Are you hungry?”

“I am so hungry, mom,” she replied.

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We drove to Panera Bread, placed our orders and took our seats. When the food came, I was still chattering away, and she answered all of my questions and then some. When we started eating, I noticed something was off with the way she ate. She was sloppy. I looked at her more closely, and her eyes were half closed, and she made little humming noises in between bites.

My heart sank. She was high. I looked at her little sister, and she noticed, too. We ate the rest of the meal in silence as reality sunk into my heart. Now what do I do, I thought.

Mari perked up after the meal, so we went into a nearby shoe store to get a pair of shoes for her sister. Mari wandered off, and I nervously looked around. Did she go outside?

I was helping her sister try on a pair of shoes when Mari emerged from an aisle. She had five boxes of shoes in her arms, and she had the biggest smile on her face.

“I’m getting them all! I love these shoes, Mom!”

I spent five minutes explaining that I couldn’t afford five pairs of shoes for her, and she picked out one. The checkout girl looked at her funny, as if she knew.

We went back home. She greeted her dog, Rocko, who we had been taking care of since she started using. And then Mari went to bed. She couldn’t keep awake any longer. She slept the rest of the day and most of the next.

When I woke her up to get her to eat, she wasn’t hungry. She was self detoxing, and it was brutal. She was determined to do this on her own.

My husband and I were completely new to the world of addiction and thought she was going to detox and be fine. Her sister didn’t understand what was going on.

“Why is she sleeping all the time, Mom?” she asked. “Why is she so sweaty?”

I’m sure that image has stayed with her ever since.

As a mother, I have always believed in my children. I believed that Mari could do this on her own, and that when it was over, we would carry on and not have to worry about drugs again. Of course, I was wrong…so wrong. She left our home and our family in about a week, and again, I didn’t hear from her.

This was early on in the disease’s progression. It got so much worse after this. Her drug of choice at that time was meth. When heroin entered the picture, the spiral was hard and fast, as you’ll read in the coming weeks.

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Amara died in January 2022. One of her younger siblings had a birthday later that year, and we came together to celebrate.

It is so hard to act celebratory when you’ve just lost a child. I have three other children, and they were all hurt by their oldest sister’s behavior and disconnect from the family while she was sick. To this day, none of them talk about it much. It still hurts them deeply.

We got together and enjoyed good food, delicious cake and conversation. All three of my children were sitting on the couch, and I said, “Picture time!” I got my phone’s camera ready, stood in front of the trio and took a few pics. They did their usual funny-face pose, but I got some adorable shots of them.

When I sat down to look at the photos, it hit me. There were only three of my children in those pics. Not four. Three.

Ever since my youngest was born in 2004, there were always FOUR in the pics. Always. Amara was the one the other three gathered around during picture time. She’d put her arms around them possessively…lovingly…with her oldest sibling’s nurturing nature. They always glowed when they were together. No one made them laugh like Amara did.

Tears sprung up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. She’s really gone, I thought. Nothing can bring her back. This isn’t real, I thought. We aren’t complete and will never be whole again. How am I ever supposed to accept this and move on?

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They didn’t see me cry. I didn’t want to ruin the occasion. I composed myself, and we proceeded with opening the presents. They were happy, and I couldn’t bring them down, but as I watched them interact, I was feeling a bittersweet pain that I knew would be with me forever.

I don’t push them to talk about Amara. Once in a while, we’ll bring her up in conversation, as in something silly she did or said, but for some reason, not one of them has ever wanted to talk about her addiction or death in detail. Maybe as they mature, the dialogue will open up more. I hope so. I think that it needs to be discussed in depth so more healing can occur.

Until then, we all carry on the best we can. I know that I’m the one who cries the most about losing my Amara. I cry every day. It’s been four years. I talk to many moms who’ve lost their children, and no matter how much time passes, the intense pain remains. How can it not? We birthed our children, nurtured them, dreamed about their futures, loved them fiercely and would’ve given them the world. They were taken from us, taken from their siblings and taken from society. It’s not OK.

Every single mom I talk to says the same thing. They wake up thinking about their lost child, and their child is the last thing they think about when they go to bed. When I go to bed at night, I always tell God to give Amara a hug for me. I also plead with Him to let me have a dream about her so I can see her beautiful face. I tell Amara that I love her and miss her. I know she hears me.

On a lighter note, I now have two grandchildren. They are a bright light in this tunnel of darkness called loss. My daughter found out she was pregnant with our grandson the very day that Amara died. Do you know what I call that? God’s grace. He knew Amara was going to die, and he brought a new life into our family that He knew would lessen the pain. My grandson is now three and is the goofiest little boy I know. He makes us laugh until we cry!

Thank you, Abba, for seeing us and giving us hope as we live without our Amara. We know she’s with you and we’ll see her again. We can’t wait to all be back together, and if there are cameras in heaven, I’m going to get those four together once more and take all of the group pictures that we were forced to stop taking in 2022.

Wow, have things been hopping!

First of all, I apologize for not posting last Friday. Things got hectic. I thought I would get to a post on Saturday, but that didn’t happen either. I’ll try to do better this week.

I thought today I’d tell you a bit of what’s going on with the foundation. You probably follow the Amara Rose Foundation’s Facebook page and see our photos, etc., but I thought it would be fun to explain how things happen while we’re making things happen. (BTW, we used to have an Instagram page, but darned if I know how to get views with those posts so gave up a couple of months ago…apparently our crowd is the FB peeps.)

We are planning the Remembrance Walk! If you don’t know, it’s on September 19th this year. We are moving venues. Why, you might ask. Last year it rained in the morning, and the track was muddy. We want to have food and other refreshments available. The fair wouldn’t allow that because they were hoping our attendees would visit their food booths/trucks. That’s understandable. They let us use the track for free.

We always worry about our event getting rained out. It came close to that happening last year, so this year we decided to find a nice walking path with a building for the ceremony and for shelter in the event of rain.

We also moved it to a Saturday to meet the needs/wants of our attendees who found it hard to attend the event on a Wednesday night. Let’s hope our attendance increases this year!

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Our yard sign campaign is called “Not Just a Statistic” and is becoming very popular…I had no idea it would. I’ll take this opportunity to thank Susan at Supreme Graphics in Arcadia. She nailed the design!

Our post on the last set-up has 15,000 views and counting. We have four more faces/memorials to add to the display (and to our website). Families are requesting their loved ones’ signs to place in their own yards.

Last Saturday, we had a request to put the display up in Sparta, at a private residence. The woman who requested sends encouraging words to me about Amara’s death and legacy every so often, and we were happy to set up in her yard.

Randy and I loaded the signs up in the Ford truck, put our coffee cups in the cupholders, turned up the music on SiriusXM and off we went. Destination? Sparta, Wisconsin.

Sparta held their annual Butterfest celebration last weekend, and the house is right off of a busy street. What a great time to get the yard signs seen by a lot of people! It was a gorgeous day. Google Maps brought us right to the house. Oh my gosh, big yard…high visibility! We were excited.

We staked 22 yard signs. The lawn was PERFECT. It had been mown, and the ground was soft.

We finished quickly and looked up to see that a woman had pulled up in the street and was staring at the display. She said something to us, so we walked over to her. We ended up talking to her for 30 minutes, right there in the middle of the street. A few cars went by and around us, but we were safe.

Her name is Adell. She is a local who just happened to be driving by at the right time. We learned that her grandson died from fentanyl poisoning two years ago. He had gone out with friends. She saw him come home later in the evening and wondered why he didn’t get out of his car. She finally went to check on him, and he had passed in the front seat. He was just gone.

She’s still healing, she said. “It’s hard,” she said. She didn’t cry, but she needed to get it out—the whole story. He struggled with addiction for years, but she didn’t think it was THAT bad, and she surely didn’t think he would die.

She had a lot of what-ifs. She has been beating herself up for not getting him more help. She carries the guilt that all of us parents and grandparents carry.

It was a heartfelt conversation. We gave her our contact info and are praying that she reaches out. We all need each other.

Before we drove away, we took a video of the display. People were already coming out of their houses to look, and cars were slowing down as well.

Today we got back in the truck to go fetch the signs. This time we brought our son’s dog, Toby. He’s a 5-year-old black lab, always ready for a bye-bye. He’s been staying with us for a while. He of course brought his tennis ball just in case.

It was raining while we drove there. The signs were a little wet but not bad. It took no time at all to dismantle the display, and on the way home we had to stop at Casey’s so Randy could get his favorite pizza (two slices). I got the crust of one (always watching my weight, haha).

We did a few more errands and finally made it home to sit down and write. Randy’s taking a nap, and Toby is waiting for me to take him outside to throw his ball.

We will find another yard after the storms pass tomorrow, and we’ll put the display up once again.

I hope you have a wonderful day or night (depending on when you’re reading this)! Stay tuned for more on Mari’s journey this Friday. Thanks for reading!

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I’ve spoken with many parents who’ve lost a child to addiction, and they ask the same thing: What did I do wrong?

I have four children, and Amara was the oldest. She crushed it as an older sister until she got sick. The other three looked up to her so much. Amara was also my most rebellious child. She was a free spirit who marched to the beat of her own drum.

When she entered her teens, we started clashing big time. I had never raised a teenager before, and she certainly wasn’t anything like I was at that age. I was just doing the best I could with this headstrong, marvelous daughter of mine.

I didn’t know the half of what she was doing while she lived at home and was in her teen years. I found out later when she got older and fessed up to a few of her antics. I was stunned, especially when she described all of the drugs she experimented with while she was a senior in high school. If I had only known!

When she started getting into trouble in her teenage years, we put her in counseling. She had about 4-5 months of it and said it didn’t do any good and that she felt better. We believed her. Now that I look back, we should have kept her in. But we always believed her, which may have been part of the problem as the years passed by.

She was born with the art of manipulation. That cute, little 5-year-old blondie knew how to get almost anything she wanted from us. Persuasion was her middle name. As she aged, she kept that ability, and it turned into a problem that we stood up against often. But any challenge from us exploded into huge fights that we sometimes backed down from because we were tired…tired of the fighting, tired of the incessant reasoning and tired from trying to tame her down while taking care of three other children. We had to pick our battles.

I admit that it felt great when she graduated and moved out. The house became more peaceful. She was happy to gain her freedom, and she seemed to be handling adulting well. Again, we didn’t know the whole story.

Her drug use increased. She dropped out of college. When she came home one day with a friend, I noticed a change of personality that I couldn’t pinpoint. I later found out she had started using meth.

She still came home, still texted and called me, and still seemed to be a great sister and daughter, making us all laugh until we cried with her sense of humor and stories from work. But yet, when her visit was over, and I felt that it was all OK and I was just imagining things, I wouldn’t hear from her for a while.

When she started using heroin, well, it was over. Although it took 7 years of cycling in and out of treatment, staying at home, getting clean, falling back, committing crimes, serving jail time, getting more treatment, coming back home, making more promises, spending more time crying and pleading, crying out to God, etc., her life came to an end. And here I am, 4 years after her death, wondering what did I do wrong?

Every parent—and perhaps you’re that parent reading this now—looks back and wonders what they did or didn’t do and how they could have prevented this disease from progressing in their child. For most of us, there was the presence of the disease even though fentanyl had the last word. That’s a whole other article.

I wish I had the magic answer to make us all feel better, but I don’t. Each of our families were different. Our environments, our styles of upbringing, the genetics we all carried over into our children, and the faith we instilled in them.

What I want to leave you with, though, is that we cannot beat ourselves up. My other children are healthy and thriving. We are a close, loving and supportive family. Amara was a part of that, but yet she always felt worthless, no matter how much love I showed her.

Yes, we all could have tried to do more, but what was that more?

When a disease takes hold, there is often nothing anyone can do, and we can’t blame ourselves. Let go of that inadequacy and move forward. One of the best ways to move forward is to help others. Raise the awareness, share your story, educate those who won’t let go of the stigma. Do it all in the name of your child. They truly loved you—don’t ever think they didn’t.

Someday it will all make sense when we are by their sides once again. I, for one, know I am never going to let go of her.

For four years, I’ve been thinking of writing a book about my daughter’s struggle with addiction. And it wouldn’t just be her struggle and fight, it would be ours as well, as we stood beside her and watched her decline. At first, it was a subtle spiral. At the beginning, we noticed small changes that alerted us that something was off. As her disease progressed, we were in full-blown crisis mode that went on forever, until the end.

I guess if I have to start this story out, it will be with the most distressing night that I lived through at the beginning of the very end. This beginning took years to culminate into the finale of her death, but this night will always stay forefront in my mind because it’s when I knew we were up against the evilest of evils, and I had no idea what was going to happen from there.

It’s January 14, 2015. It’s 1:00 a.m. I’m driving in my Nissan Altima down Highway 35 between Stoddard and Genoa. I’m alone. It’s dark and it’s cold. I have the radio on, but I don’t remember what was playing. I’m looking for my 24-year-old daughter, Mari.

In the late hours of January 13, Mari overdosed on heroin in her house in Stoddard. Her boyfriend was with her and called 911. The ambulance came and took her to Mayo Clinic’s ER. Her boyfriend followed in her car. A short time later, she was released, and he took her away.

I got the phone call from Mari’s boss. I still am not sure how she found out, it was most likely from one of the paramedics who answered the call and let her know. I was getting ready for bed, and when I got the call, I dressed quickly, called my husband Randy, who was a truck driver and far away, and ran downstairs to tell my son Jacob to come upstairs and sleep close to his little sister.

“Mari overdosed,” I told him.

Without waiting for a reply, I jumped in my car and rushed to the hospital, only to find that she and her boyfriend had taken off already. I was determined to find my baby. SHE OVERDOSED. This was serious. She died and had been revived. Surely she was scared and wanted her mama.

I drove up and down the south-side streets of La Crosse where I thought she might be. I hoped to find his car or even her standing outside of a house. My mind wasn’t working right.

I decided that she wasn’t in La Crosse but went back to her house in Stoddard. I headed out of town but had to stop at the last Kwik Trip heading out of town. I needed to use the restroom and grab some coffee. I walked in the store and went into the women’s restroom but stopped short. Someone had vomited all over the floor. I used the men’s bathroom instead. I told the cashier what had happened, got my coffee and got back into my car. The night seemed more evil than it was before.

The River Road drive from La Crosse to Stoddard went quickly, and I soon pulled up in front of Mari’s house in Stoddard. Something was off. Lights were on, and there was an eerie feeling emulating from the outside. I tried the door, and it was locked. I had a key since we owned the house (we rented it out to Mari). I unlocked the door and cautiously went inside.

It felt like someone was there, but no one was, although the police had been there before me. Not only had they been inside, they had gone through the place with a fine-tooth comb. They had conducted a drug bust.

I found out later that they had been watching Mari’s house for months because they suspected it was a drug house where Mari and her boyfriend had been dealing and also letting people in to use in the basement. They had taken down every single license plate number and were slowly building their case against my daughter and her boyfriend.

I went from room to room, calling out her name. I found her beloved “Puppy” stuffed toy—her childhood toy—lying on the kitchen floor. I picked it up and sobbed. I climbed the stairs to the bedrooms and found things lying here and there. The bed was unmade. Her bedroom window was open, and cold was creeping in, so I shut it and just stood and looked around, uncertain as to what to do.

I didn’t want to go home yet. I had to find her, but I was also really sad that she hadn’t wanted to find me.

I got back in the car and started driving toward Genoa. I drove past Genoa and went to De Soto, hoping to spot her car. I found nothing. Reluctantly, I steered the car back toward home.

When I arrived back on my farm, the sun was starting to rise. I’ll never forget the walk through the yard and down the path to my front porch. I was distraught, confused and scared. I felt betrayed, and I was scared for my daughter. I had no idea that this was the first of many overdose experiences with my daughter that we were to live through. This part of hell taunted and welcomed us that night, and we were in for the ride of our lives.

I’ve been talking a lot with one of Amara’s best friends lately. He was using with her and communicating often with her up until a couple days before she passed away. They were very tight, and not in a romantic way (since he’s gay).

Talking and texting with this guy makes my heart so happy. He is so much fun and has the best sense of humor, like Amara did. I can see why they got so close. I love him as a son.

Did I mention that he is in successful recovery now? He has been for longer than a year, and to see him now, you’d never imagine that he had been struggling with addiction. He has a full-time job, an apartment and lots of sober friends. I’m really proud of him!

But it also makes me sad as I think why did he make it out of the hole while Amara did not and died? What was the difference between the two and their addictions? Is he still alive because he never encountered fentanyl? Is it simply just the luck of the draw over time?

Let’s say that fentanyl wasn’t a thing, and they both continued to use and both lived. Yes, Amara would still be alive, but her brain already suffered neurological damage from years of drug use. The last couple of times I spent time with her, I could see it, and my spirit sank. If she survived and recovered, she would have spent the rest of her life with an impairment, probably dependent on us.

The last time she came home to visit, she sat on my office floor while I worked on a book for a client. I was so happy to have her home, but something was just off. She wasn’t talking much. She wasn’t excited to see her dog, Rocko. Her spark from her early days was just gone. Instead, there was an unemotional, expressionless woman sitting across from me who seemed indifferent to being home and with her mom and dog and familiar things.

She walked out of the office to grab a cup out of a cupboard. When I came out of the office I found her standing in front of the cupboard, crying as she looked at a photo of her baby niece that I had put up. “Oh, mom, she’s so beautiful!” Amara cried.

She hadn’t seen the baby yet because we all wanted to make sure she wasn’t high when she did. The time was fast approaching where that would have been a reality. I was so excited to know that Amara was getting close to meeting her niece.

Her tears weren’t flowing just because the baby was beautiful, they were flowing because I think deep down, Amara knew she had lost years of family time and connection with us all due to her addiction. She had deep regrets. She had to rebuild her relationship with her siblings, and that wasn’t going to be easy.

Well, she never got the chance because she never had stopped using; in fact, it all got worse from that month on…all the way to her death.

Some days I want to spill it all out, and other days (like today) I don’t feel like sharing much because it’s still painful, and I am tired of crying.

But I just wanted to note that yes, I don’t know why some addicts recover while others die. Is it genetics, family dynamics, a case of the right people helping them at the right time, a matter of that EUREKA moment that hits at just the right time and helps them turn it all around?

I think that with Amara’s friend, it was a slow process with a couple of learning experiences (relapses), good support, and the realization that he was better, it was worth living and his life matters. He was one of the lucky ones.

I really wish Amara would have been one of the lucky ones, too.

I wrote this piece when I was just grasping the fact that my daughter (and our family) were in for the biggest fight of our lives. It was a fight none of us won.

We buried her in a cemetery on January 15, 2022.

Just one week before her funeral, she was driving right by the cemetery she would be laid to rest in days later. I think of that every time I drive through that town. I still can’t believe it.

The last line is etched on her gravestone: “Always and forever our baby you’ll be.”

Amara was 31.

This is every addict’s parent’s story.

I’ve lost you. Gone is the baby girl I held in my arms while whispering my words of adoration. Gone is the little girl whose fingernails I painted a soft, innocent pink, while we sang “I love you, you love me” with Barney on T.V. Gone for now are the dreams I had for your life as I watched you walk into your Kindergarten room on the first day of school. Dashed are the hopes and pride that swelled up in my heart as I saw you sing in your school’s choral concerts, as you went on your first date, and as you walked down the aisle with high school diploma in hand—how could I fathom I was watching you march toward the devastation called addiction?

I shared in your excitement as you, with a gleam in your eyes, told me about the man that wanted to date you. “This could be the one, mom,” you said. He was the one—the man that injected the vein in your arm with your first dose of heroin. How many times he did after that, I don’t know, but you were hooked. You eventually overdosed and died, and in a twisted sense of irony, he was there to resuscitate you. I’ll never forget the call I got from the hospital, late at night. You were there, recovering, but they released you before I arrived. You ran back into his arms, and you both ran, and I began the mad search for my daughter, who had suddenly become a stranger to me. Shock turned into denial, which evolved into anger and then unimaginable sadness and loss. My little girl was gone.

The night you overdosed, I started looking for you at your house. I let myself in, only to find the police had been there before me. I saw papers strewn around your floor, drawers wide open and your favorite childhood stuffed animal lying symbolically abandoned on the kitchen floor. Clutching it to my chest, I sobbed and slowly walked through every room. Your bedroom, where all the drugs were found, was cold. A window was open, and the January wind was seeping in. I closed it, but the cold and the auras of evilness and death clung to me. “Where are you?” I sobbed as I left.

From then on, life would never be the same.

The night you overdosed was just the beginning for us, but only one night in your long love affair with drugs. We soon discovered it wasn’t just heroin—you relied on meth and prescription pills to numb your insecurities and life’s pain.

I thought I could fix it all. I thought it would be simple. I had no idea what our family and I were up against.

I eventually found you, and managed to get you into treatment, thinking six weeks in rehabilitation would bring you back to what we knew, but I was wrong. You always went back to him, back to the needles, spoons, fine white powder and brown liquid in your veins. The battle to get you back is far from over, but I am determined to win. However, it’s clear to see how much the drugs have altered your old persona and brain, and I’m now dealing with a new person. Your family and friends have seen you lose weight as your health deteriorates, your body unbelievingly still functioning despite all you’re doing to destroy it.

We’ve seen you turn into a liar and master manipulator. You’ve learned how to twist and turn facts and situations to where we are hanging onto the string of hope you’re dangling in front of us. In the beginning, we gave you money, bailed you out of drug-induced debt, gave you rides—always giving you the benefit of the doubt because we thought you were on recovery road. You mocked our naiveness. We later learned that what we were doing was called enabling.

We’ve talked to you through jail phones, with a glass partition between us. We’ve seen you stand in front of a judge multiple times, taking his lenient sentences, you promising you’ll never go back to the drugs again. You snowballed even him.

There are days we can’t cope with your addiction. All of us have felt the need to shut down—sometimes hoping that if we could just shut our eyes or sleep for a while, the nightmare would go away. In the beginning, losing you consumed all of us. We cried every day. We couldn’t put in a productive day at work. At first, our co-workers showed us much sympathy and understanding, but as time wore on, even they got tired of the long journey, saying you belonged in jail and not wanting to hear about it anymore. We went to support groups, but found even sharing our sorrow wouldn’t change anything.

Knowing you overdosed and “losing” you to the drugs has been like experiencing a death. I’ve said that many times. It was a sudden death of the daughter we thought we knew, and we went through all the mourning that happens when someone dies. The grief has been overwhelming. I tell you this now, over and over, but you look at me expressionless, as if all you can think of is when you’re getting your next hit. Do you care what each high symbolizes? If I could sit by you while you’re using, I would tell you what each syringe is full of: This dose will send your mother into despair and heart-wrenching fits of sobbing; your next hit will throw your father to his knees, as he cries out in pain, “What did I do wrong?”; the next will saturate your little brother’s pillow with tears of anguish, fear and disappointment; and your next will rock your little sister’s world, as her young brain tries to wrap around the whole concept of addiction.

All of our sorrow aside, we’ve seen the other faces of addiction. We’ve seen you lose your license, your car, your house and old friends. Your credit is ruined, and it will take a miracle for you to ever get a loan or a decent job or to get back into college. Your addiction has cost us thousands of dollars.

When I do get to see you, I hold you and close my eyes as I give you a kiss. For a few seconds I feel like I’m once again kissing my little girl’s smooth, soft cheek, and there is hope. But when it’s time to let go, I’ll look into an addict’s eyes, and we both know it’s all changed. We’re both fighting a demon, me lashing out at it with fury, while you’re pushing it away and then pulling it back because you’ve become numb to its evilness and only want the deceptive comfort and rush of pleasure it always brings you.

It’s been a whole year, now. I don’t know where it will go from here. I see you taking promising steps forward, which turn into leaps backward. Our family’s shock and sorrow have evolved into a fight to just keep you off the streets—and breathing. You disappear for weeks, and we hear reports of people seeing you walking the city streets without any shoes, hair in disarray. How many of your purses have been stolen? How many strange houses have you “squatted” in, begging for a bed to sleep in or a bite to eat? How much sleep have you lost, as you restlessly walk and shoplift and hide while you’re high on the stimulating effects of meth?

Can I ask you, daughter, is this the life you enjoy? Why? All I know is we have been dealt a devastating hand that we will probably forever be trying to beat but never understand. I will tell you this, though: Until the day I die, I will fight to get you back and see you live the life I dreamed for you as you were growing up. I love you, you love me, forever my baby you’ll be.