Mr. Mackey Knew All Along, Mmmkay?

Mr. Mackey had it right all along. All those episodes of South Park aired with a singluar message.

Sometimes you have the right to be over protective.

You have the wherewithal to put your child's safety and well-being above and beyond the selfishness, hell self-destruction, of other's and you do all in your power to protect them. Protect them from harm, from devastation, even from disappointment.

Last week, someone I grew up with had the horrifically heartbreaking task forced upon her of breaking news to her son of his father's untimely death. Sudden and quick. Here one minute, gone the next. Fell victim to a problem I unfortunately know all too well, not from self experience but as a witness to how it has destroyed my life and my sons. And he too had been someone I grew up with.

And this news, as horrible as it is, upset me so much deeper than just the passing of someone I know, someone I went to school with the entirety of my life. It affected me as a possibility of what my life could be. Of news that someday I would have potentially had to break to my own son. THIS hit home.

Been clean for a time. Had been battling addiction for years, but clean as far as anyone knew. Then, with a flick of a needle, he was done. Overwhelmed by whatever emotions or circumstances presented themselves that drove him to use yet again. And now he's gone.

And so the story goes. One I have sadly become all too familiar with. Watching someone's life fall into a black hole from the outside. Watching how their actions affect so many around them. Like a pebble in a stoic lake, that ripple keeps going and going, outward, possibly fainter as it gets farther from the source, but still felt nonetheless.

I want nothing more than to protect my son from something like this. To keep him safe from watching the ups and downs of what I know of addiction. From the criminal acts it causes people to commit, the pain it causes others by the mood swings and withdrawals.

Popping in and out of someone's life. Unstable. Until finally the out choice is no longer a choice, it's a fatality. It's over. Death the only way to make them stop suffering.

This isn't the first time this has happened to someone I knew. And I doubt it will be the last. Someone with kids, kids who end up being the ones who suffer the most from it.

Is it wrong of me to want to keep my child from it? To want to shield him from the horror of seeing it firsthand? To make sure that after everything his little 6 year old self has already been through and witnessed that it ends where it did 2 years ago?

A parent who cares more about their child's well being than their own would see that. They would want what is best for their kid, not themselves. They would want to keep them stable and safe and happy and not disrupt their lives.

One would think.

My heart breaks at the idea of being in my friends shoes. And though my thoughts are with their family during what I can only imagine is a most heart-wrenching ordeal, I am for now grateful for the Massachusetts Legal System, and hope with everything I have it always help to protect my child from the possibility of anything like this ever happening.

Drugs are bad, Mmmkay?