Wasted Lives

If you dropped by for a yuk today, better move on. I’m in the mood to tell a sad story.

I’ll call her Lisa but her friends will know who I’m talking about. In high school, Lisa was the kind of girl we envied. Looks, brains, charm—she had it all.

In our sophomore year, Lisa and I vied for Homecoming Princess, and she didn’t show up for the pep rally where they announced the winner. The other nominee and I stood there, in front of the entire student body, fake smiles pasted on, applauding for the absent Lisa. Even then, I think I knew her failure to appear was out of fear rather than arrogance.

In our junior year, Lisa got pregnant and, as her best friend, she told only me. Those days, the best friend’s responsibility was to get the pregnant friend down to the L.A. Free Clinic. I don’t know if Planned Parenthood existed then, but if it did, we sure hadn’t heard about it. So, on a Saturday, I conjured up an excuse to borrow my stepmom’s car, and we set off for Hollywood to line up behind the runaways getting VD tests…only to find out pregnancy wasn't on the Saturday menu.

Eventually, her mother (a nurse who’d been raised in a French Canadian convent) discovered the pregnancy and informed Lisa that abortion was out of the question. She concocted a cover story (something to do with the pituitary gland and the need for darkness) and made us swear to uphold the party line to our friends. All summer long that year, I visited Lisa during the day, and at night we ventured out like vampires to drive-in movies where she hid in the car while I made the snack runs.

On the day Lisa gave birth, I arrived at the hospital ready to share in the blessed event. It frankly hadn’t occurred to my naïve sixteen-year-old mind that giving your baby away was no time to celebrate. At any rate, normal life resumed. Or, it did for me. I know now, life would never really be normal for Lisa again.

We went our separate ways in college but visited often. After a year, she got accepted as a straight-A transfer student to Berkeley but opted instead to follow a loser she’d gotten tangled up with to Lake Tahoe where she became a chambermaid. Yeah. The straight-A student stripped beds and changed pillowcases for a living. But, wait. It got worse.

Loser #1 went out of her life, only to be followed quickly by Loser #2. This guy moved into the house she rented from her parents and promptly set up a cocaine distribution center. Lisa did so much of the drug herself that her mother (remember the nurse?) instantly recognized the source of her daughter’s constant nosebleeds and had the house raided while Lisa was away. Exit Loser #2 and, to her credit, Lisa kicked cocaine cold turkey.

Thus began the good years. Lisa met a respectable guy, fell in love, and had a fairy-tale wedding aboard a boat on Lake Tahoe. I was honored to be her bridesmaid. On occasion, I visited her beautiful home high up in the mountains and thought, at last, Lisa is happy.

Naturally, nothing is ever as it appears from the outside. Still, I was surprised when, years later, I got the call that Lisa had checked into the Betty Ford Clinic for alcohol addiction. I drove down to see her one day and she seemed stiff, uncomfortable--not overly glad to see me—which was understandable given the foreign surroundings.

Around the time of our twentieth high school reunion, she returned to drinking, left her husband, and asked if she could live with me while she got back on her feet. I consented. Now, I got an up-close-and-personal glimpse into an alcoholic’s life. By her own admission, she arose from bed to down her first shot as soon as the garage door shut when I left for work in the morning. Although she kept a liquor bottle hidden in a cupboard, I easily tracked her progress: three days to consume a half-gallon of Vodka. At night, we’d talk about her depression—about her inability to appreciate the simple beauty of a sunset—about the time she’d stopped herself from putting a gun to her head.

Three months into her stay, I came home from work to the most pain-filled wailing I’d ever heard. She’d already phoned her sister to come help me get her into rehab, which we did that very night. I visited her weekly and a month or so later, I came home one day to find her stuff gone; she’d moved in with a woman she met at the clinic.

For the next several years, Lisa held a job, eventually got her own place, and stayed off alcohol. She even located her long-lost daughter and began a relationship with her. But then, the downward spiral began anew. Whether it started with the car accident she was involved in, the voluntary hysterectomy, the carpal tunnel surgery…who knows? Somewhere along the line, she filed for disability and never went back to work. This time, it was pills. Vicodin. And another trip to rehab. Then it was a return to alcohol until a bout with pancreatitis nearly killed her and prompted yet another stay in rehab. Frankly, between the stays for pills and the stays for alcohol, I’ve lost track of the number of times she’s been hospitalized.

Two years ago, another friend and I began stopping by every couple of months to pay her bills when she said she could no longer open her mail. Then, last July, she had to move. We helped pack boxes and went through twenty years of expensive but outdated fashions. Even after decades of an unhealthy lifestyle, Lisa still looked good. She just didn’t have anyone or anything to look good for.

This Saturday will be Lisa’s fifty-second birthday. She no longer ventures out during the day, except to see the pain management doc and her shrink. She grocery shops at midnight. Months go by and mail remains unopened, yet she keeps meticulous notes on the myriad of medications taken daily. Her linen closet looks like a pharmacy. She takes pills for pain, depression, anxiety, menopause, stomach problems, and allergies. She takes pills to ward off the side effects of other pills.

Her sister called this morning, saying she’d heard I was taking Lisa out to dinner for her birthday. “She’s really a mess,” the sister told me. “I spoke to her psychiatrist this week and it’s time for rehab again. See what you can do to talk her into it.”

I’m cursed with an excellent memory. When I look at Lisa I can still see the vibrant young girl she once was--the one with a twinkle in her eye and unlimited opportunities for the future.

It breaks my heart to realize the future has come and gone.