The Needle and the Damage Done

It's been a while since I've checked in here. There is lots I should probably post on. Indeed, it's been a crazy week, beginning with Kelly getting the stomach flu and throwing up 3 times on Sunday and having a little relapse tonight with cramps and crying for ages, until she fell asleep. I missed a party tonight I was supposed to go to, and with a host who I am sure will be right frigging cranky with me, since I skipped his last party too, and I know I will be snubbed next time around, but with a sick kid and being tired, well, sorry, but fuck it. My wife is also on strike, so tomorrow she has to picket for the first time in her life - for 4 hours.
Also, I wasn't going to post any of that, because my next post was going to be about moving as a child. I've been sort of haunted by the memories of that all week, and so I've sort of been working in it in my head so as it isn't whiny and has some sort of form. However, today I got some news about someone that I want to write about right now. And, I keep thinking that it would be even better and make more sense if I did the moving post before this one, but I can't get these thoughts out of my head, so I am jumping ahead to the post tonight.
So this post has to do exclusively with my childhood friend Ruby. Or at least I think she's called Ruby on here. Anyway, I've talked about Ruby on here before - think back to stories about smoking, about stealing rum, about going out for lunch each week and to the movie and bowling and hanging around her mother's shop. You'll remember the name.
Well, Ruby is one year older than me - 37 going on 38. We met after I moved in next door to her. I met her one morning when I was 5, as I dragged a towel out to the end of my driveway, next to the puddle, to suntan. Why, I dunno. But I remember doing it vividly.
So anyway, she was walking to school and said hello and that started it all. Soon, we were inseperable. I mean that in the truest sense. We were, quite frankly, like twins. Her parents were always busy. Her dad was a fireman and was always working odd shifts, and her mom worked all day, and then her parents would curl in the winters a couple times a week, sometimes beginning after 10 at night, and they liked to party, so she was alone alot. So, Ruby would end up staying over almost every weekend, and we were so close, our folks thought nothing of us sleeping in the same bed. We spent all of our time together, and we used to get teased because we played together, but it didn't matter to us. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have been able to be such good friends with so many women, I don't think. I have millions of stories about us, which I won't bore you with. Let's just say that I remember we were like kin. We would have to have everything the same, right down to ordering the same food in restaurants, getting the same toys, the same records, the same books.... you name it.
Ruby lived in the house next door, and she had a swimming pool. It was heaven. We spent every summer day in there. Our parents were friends and had many of the same friends, so we were all so close. Thus, when it was announced that we were moving to Saskatchewan, it was traumatic for both of us. I am going to tell that story, hopefully tomorrow, all about the move, and all that lead up to it, because that makes all of this more interesting, but as I said, I don't want to wait. So bear with some repeating tomorrow.
So, let's fast forward - I move away. Ruby comes to visit me in the summers, and we go back there at Xmas, and so we are still pretty close. Of course, she goes to junior high, and meets new people - the wrong people. She also hangs out with Delilah - remember my post about her and her brother Taters? Their parents were the druggie bootleggers? Well, Ruby gets in with those types of folks, becomes a big pothead, and whatever. I am thinking she dropped out of school in grade 8 or 9 - I can't remember. Anyway, when I was in grade 8, going into grade 9, we go out there to visit, and I can't get in touch with her. When I finally do, we meet up at a ball game, but she's high as a kite, and cold, and with these people who look like they want to stab me, so I leave, sad, dejected, and wander around my old home town, alone.
So, I get my own sort of life started in Sask. and Ruby and I don't keep in touch. She'd call on my birthday, but that's about it. I saw her in 86, and she was sort of calmed down by then, and we begin keeping in touch about once a year. She told me all about partying with Motley Crue, doing loads of coke with them on their bus, when she was 16, and I believe it.
Well, as I said, we always remain in this once every year or two marathon phone conversation thing, and she had her ups and downs, like having a baby with this freaky scary guy about 11 years ago, who was never in the picture. Anyway, that's a whole story in itself, but let's leave it at that.
Flash forward to 1998 - I am getting married and send an invitation to Ruby and her family to be polite. She phones me the day it arrives and tells me she is coming no matter what. She just had her second baby and was finalizing the details of buying her folks' house, the one next to where I grew up, the one with the pool. I think this is the coolest thing ever, because it's one way to keep a constant in my memories. I could still go home again, sure enough! Anyway, she is living with the new baby's daddy, they bought the house, and her mom will babysit, so she flies out, spends the week before the wedding with us, and while she got on our nerves in the end, it was so sweet that she came, and it was really touching. I am honoured she did that. And it was fun introducing her to Margo, saying, "this is the new Ruby".
We kept in touch after that yearly. When we went to the coast in 2002, we went to visit her and her boyfriend. They had another baby, and it was so cool to see her house again. She had it redone so nice, and had a new dog, and the pool was redone, and I was disappointed that she wasn't smoking, because she chainsmoked from the age of 11 and yet she quit. I hadn't quit then, and wanted a smoking buddy. She was also on weight watchers and lost 50 lbs. She was working at Safeway, bagging groceries to get out of the house, and I was just so impressed. It was Kelly's first birthday when we were there and her kids played with her and they were so sweet. It was such a good time. It made leaving really hard for me.
We kept in touch after that once a year again. The last time she called would have been 3 Christmas' ago. I sort of forgot to call since then, but I am thinking I may have called and left a message a couple years ago on her birthday but I don't remember.
Anyway, my sister "Leslie" is planning a trip back this summer with her kids - the first time in 23 years for her, and her plan was to crash at Ruby's, since they were also friends. Well, my mom calls me today and said she was talking to her friend in Chilliwack last night and asked how Ruby's folks were. Her friend replied "not good at all" and my mom asked why. Apparently, Ruby's folks, who I would guess are 66, have her three kids, ages 11, 9, and 6. I guess Ruby is a terrible drug addict and is not allowed near her parents or the kids. She supposedly was going around town saying she was going to kill her parents and get the money so she can buy drugs. She lost the house too. Of course my mom didn't think to ask what kind of drugs or when this all transpired.
I feel so traumatized right now. I keep thinking of these old people, who now live in an apartment, raising three grandchildren, while their only daughter is living in a flophouse, doing God knows what with God knows who. I bet it's meth. Meth or crack. I doubt it's herion, because she sounds manic and crazy, and doesn't heroin make you dopey?
It freaks me out because the other night Leslie called to tell me she was reading the Chilliwack newspaper online and someone we know died, and I said this guy's sister was a bad heroin junkie, because Ruby had told me that. And now Ruby is the junkie.
When she bought her parents' house, she kept the phone number - the first number I ever learned as a kid. One I know off by heart. I called it from my cell phone at work and her number is now a fax line. The house is gone. The phone is gone. Her kids are gone. I just found a picture of her kids a week ago, from when we were visiting. I am haunted right now by their images. No child deserves to feel so empty and scared and unsure. No child should have to not know where his or her mother is, if she's alive, if she's safe. Most importantly, your mother is supposed to make you feel safe. I can't stop thinking of scenarios that went on to make her lose the kids. I want to cry. Those poor kids.
And poor Ruby. She lost it all. You see stories like this all the time, but they don't mean anything because you don't know them. I know this story.
So as I sit here as I do every Christmas and think about Xmas past, and how we spent so much time together for so many of them, I juxtapose that with Xmas this year - what in the hell do these kids of hers have to look forward to? How empty will it be for everyone with Ruby in some flophouse, not knowing or caring it's Christmas. SPending it without her kids. It's fucking horrible.
So tonight I am mourning for those kids - Alicia, McKayla, Brayden - and what they have lost, and what they have gone through, and what they are going through. I mourn for her parents, who are spending their retirement years as reluctant parents, and not knowing if their daughter will live or die or ever be their daughter as they know it again. And I mourn for my friend. For all that could have been. For all that was. And for all that might never be now. So much potential, blessed with so much, and it doesn't matter.
And I mourn, selfishly, for my memories. Now I can't go home again. Gone are the ties to the old neighborhood. Gone are the physical connection to my old house, Ruby's house, the whole neighborhood. And gone is my friend who remembers what I remember, and who is my anchor to that time. Selfish, yes, but I mourn that. I may never be able to go home again.
Sue, my friend (fuck this Ruby business, a pseudonym doesn't suit you), I love you for so many reasons. At different times of my life you've been my 4th sister, my best friend, my annoying thorn in my side, my confidant, my connection to the past, and I think you could have been the first girl I kissed, as in really kissed. I dunno what you are doing or why or how and there is nothing I can do but send up a prayer tonight when I go to bed and have silence, and pray that God keeps you well, and gives you what you need to get yourself back to the real you. I may never hear from you again. I may never see you again. I hope that's not true. And if this was a radio station, and not a blog, the following goes out to you from our friends Coldplay:
When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want
but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse.
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know J
ust what you're worthLights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
Tears stream, down on your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down on your face
And I..Tears stream, down on your face
I promise you
I will learn from the mistakes
Tears stream down on your face
And I..Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you.

Hold on tight my friend.
xo
JT