Perspective
Scott Campbell on Faith: “Truth Telling”

On Tuesday, January 7, I came back to the church office after lunch to an urgent phone message to call my wife, Lin. Our 23-year-old daughter, Suzanna, had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance. As I tried to call my wife’s cell phone, the second line rang. It was Lin. Among the sobs I managed to make out the words: “She’s dead. Come as fast as you can.”

The next hour or two passed in slow motion. I recall driving to the Cambridge Hospital with an almost eerie sense of calm. The world about me was silent and obstacles seemed to disappear, Red Sea-like, as the road took me to my destination. I circled the block twice looking for a parking space, strangely, being unwilling to do something as unfamiliar as paying for parking in the hospital garage. Someone took me back into the ER and a door opened to her room. She lay on a gurney with the resuscitation tube still in her mouth. Her body looked small, pale and fragile. The light was harsh. Lin was crying. We held each other, too stunned to say much. They had done the best they could we were told. They were very sorry for our loss. There was somebody from the psychiatric unit if we needed to talk, and they were very sorry, but the police would need to talk to us in a few minutes. When someone young dies for no apparent reason they have to investigate. Of course, of course. We understood. Truth be told, we understood nothing, but those were the words that came.

Our thoughts turned quickly to Suzanna’s children. Jesse had just turned five and Caylum was 18 months old. The man Suzanna had recently married was not their father and was not in a position to care for them. We would need to get them and bring them to our home. It would not be unusual for them to be there. They had lived with us off and on for a good part of the fall. But there were so many questions. Were we prepared at age 55 to rear two small children? How would we tell Jesse about his mother? What had happened to her? How could any of this be happening?

The next days were the longest of my life. The minutes groaned by. The phone began to ring, and there were endless calls to make. Friends and family appeared from everywhere. The church came to life on our behalf. There were literally hundreds of decisions to make, most minor, a few major. There was a service to plan and arrangements to make. We slept little or not at all. Then, there was the mostly unasked question about what had happened. Suzanna had been found slumped next to her bed. But what was the cause of death? We had our suspicions, but we hoped against hope that we were wrong.

There are many things I could write about here. I could tell you about the unfathomable blessing of being borne on eagle’s wings by a church in our hour of deepest need. I could tell you about the moving memorial service for Suzanna on January 11 in a packed church. I could tell you about the kindness of strangers during these days, or about the reassurance we felt when other parents who had lost children reached out to us. So many things I have learned over these days, none of them by choice. But there is one part of the story that needs especially to be told.

On January 17 we received information that confirmed our worst fears. The medical examiner’s preliminary conclusion was that Suzanna had died of a heroin overdose. We had known for several months that she had begun to use drugs during the preceding year, following her separation from the children’s father. Her health, always frail, began to deteriorate over the succeeding months. That was the reason that the children had spent so much time with us through the autumn. She had been through a rehab program and wanted desperately to make a good life for her new family, but the bad choices that she had made at a desperate time in her life now had her in their clutches. We had seen her on nearly a daily basis and believed that she was drug-free through the months leading up to her death. We don’t know when she began to use drugs again.

The part of the story that needs to be told is that Suzanna’s life is not summed up in the way she died. No one’s life can be revealed in a snap shot—least of all a snap shot of their death. I have gone through a good deal of soul-searching over the last few weeks around whether to tell the truth about Suzanna’s death. Some very caring friends have urged me not to do so, telling me that the stigma attached to drugs, and particularly a drug like heroin, will forever cloud her memory. I do not know whether they are right, but I do know that keeping silence before destructive forces only empowers them.

I need to speak of Suzanna’s life and yes, her death, for two reasons. First, I am persuaded that telling the truth is almost always the first step towards healing. Secrets isolate, isolation leads to shame, and shame prevents us from finding wholeness. I do not want to remain alone, ashamed and broken around my beloved daughter’s life. Second, I have a hope that opening her story might in some way help someone else. I don’t know how that might happen, but if anything positive can come out of this terrible experience, I do not want to stand in the way.

I heard a statistic the other day that boggles the mind. The commentator claimed that some 30 million Americans have addiction problems of one sort or another. What the statistics cannot tell us is anything about the stories behind those numbers. Every one of these persons is a beloved child of God. Most have people who also love them. They all have their own histories. They have laughed and cried. They have had their own hopes and dreams. They have known joy and deep disappointment. They are people—not categories and not statistics.

My daughter Suzanna died of an overdose of heroin. My daughter Suzanna is also the person who at the age of 14 made a trip to Romania and cradled malnourished orphans in her arms. She is the same young woman who was studying to become a midwife and who loved her two children with every fiber of her being. She is the same person who exasperated us and delighted us and made us laugh till tears ran down our cheeks. Somewhere along the way she was persuaded to trust the lie that dulling the pain in her life would help her. Most of us have many chances to renounce the lies we decide to trust. She did not.

None of this is to say that Suzanna was not responsible for the decisions she made or to say that those of us who loved her are not deeply hurt and angry with her for what she chose. It is simply to say that we have been reminded in a powerful way that judgment is for God, and that the work of human beings is to love each other, forgive each other and in so doing redeem each other.

So I will tell the story of their mother to Jesse and Caylum. I will tell them of her boundless love for them and her radiant smile. I will tell them of her stubbornness and fierce sense of independence. I will remind them that they are her most precious legacy. I will also tell them that she made a terrible mistake that cost her far more than it should have. I will do all that I can to keep her memory alive in all the fullness that was Suzanna.

Reprinted with permission