The Death Of Heroin

There was a man I once knew. He was a good man with a good heart. But he was from a lost family in a lost world and he felt like he had lost something deep inside himself. Desperately he searched for something to replace what he'd lost. But, as is always the case when you go looking to fill your emptiness in the wrong places, he found himself in the clutches of a great monster: heroin.
Now heroin is a parasite that promises to fill your emptiness. But all it ever does is devour your life, health and happiness. And this is exactly what it proceeded to do to the man. Eventually his wife divorced him for the sake of their children and he lost everything he ever had. His sons were broken, his wife was empty and they were all too hurt and angry to let him come back. The monster was continuing to consume their lives, even when they thought it was gone. Many more things were lost: one son lost his freedom, the other lost his faith, and his wife lost her sight. But the most tragic loss of all by far is that of the man himself. You see the parasite wasn't just taking away the man's life on the outside, it was sucking his life from the inside also.
And this is what makes this story so so sad. The man, the good man with a good heart, died.
He never got to find what he was looking for. And his children will always know him this way, the broken man with the parasite. His wife will always look for another man, and never find one quite like him.
I will go to his funeral tomorrow, I and his two sons and his wife. And I will see for the first time what this monster has done to him. I will cry for him because he will not get to show his children he's sorry. I will cry more, I think, for his family because they have lost yet another thing and therefore have something else to search for. But I will cry most for a wasted life.
The man was my uncle. And this is his story. He seemed unimportant but he was not. Because his story is my cousin's story. And they cannot escape it. It's not a story to them, it's a living nightmare. So if you have a moment think about the man. Pray for his children. Pray for his wife. Pray that this monster, this parasite will die. Pray for the death of Heroin.

R.I.P. Danny 1/19/2017