On My Mind

Executive editor — issues and opinions

Learning From “Eternity”

I had the honor recently of meeting an amazing group of parents called “Eternity.”
I’ll be telling their story in next week’s Jewish Times.
Eternity is a group of friends sponsored by the Associated’s Jewish Addiction Services.
These friends most definitely wish they weren’t in this particular “club,” because each of the seven parents interviewed had lost an adult child to a drug overdose.
Their children were just like your children or my children. They liked hamburgers, comedies, music, sports and nature. Most of all, they loved other people.
They died because of the insidious disease of drug addiction.
I learned a great deal from these seven parents. What I think I learned the most, however, was how important it is as a caring community that we not stigmatize anyone because of this disease.
The Eternity group said that their inner circle of personal friends were always supportive and there for them. Once they ventured out of that circle, just a little bit, they could feel the rays of judgment coming from others, and sometimes that judgment was weighed right here in the Jewish community.
At a time when the Book of Life is very much in our holiday thoughts, it’s important that we give “chizik” or strength to our friends and neighbors who have suffered an incalculable loss. Isn’t that why we’re on this earth to begin with, to help each other?
And as one parent said, it would have been easier to deal with the public perception of their child’s death had it been a disease such as cancer.
Instead, it was drug addiction.
Make no mistake about it, this is a serious, deadly disease.The members of Eternity will tell you, that the drug heroin is no longer under the “ownership” of some unfamiliar flop house in an abandoned building.
Heroin is now connecting itself to neighborhoods, Jewish neighborhoods. The spread of these drugs should be a reality check for every parent.
Just ask one of the “Eternity” members.
“Joining” their club has an admission “fee” that’s just way too unimaginable. But that doesn’t mean we should turn from them. Instead, we should embrace them and listen to them.
They have been made wise.
And we as parents and community members need their wisdom.