The Sacrificial Man - More Than An Addict
Every life has meaning, even when the evils we're born into prevent us from finding our own. It doesn't stop the world from using us, and some devil from stealing everything we didn't know we had. My uncle Dietrick never had a job, a driver's license, or a bank account. He died the night before our birthday; and would have been 44 years old, as I turned 42. Uncle Dee was my grandmother's last child, and the first and only baby she had with her eternal husband. He was a miracle baby. Being my young teen mother's first child, whom she was forced to keep as a punishment for fornication; I was lucky to be a gift to my Uncle Dee on his second birthday.
In our earliest formative years, Dietrick and I lived as siblings, with my value to him giving me a sense of belonging in our family. For myself and our cousins; Uncle Dee was the source of healing laughter, in a family plagued with mental illnesses that our elders attributed to black magic and voodoo curses. Grand-aunts and grandmothers consulted witch doctors and prayed to unresponsive gods. Fathers and grandfathers were absentee, drunk, or high on crack with most of the other men of the family. Uncle Dee - large for his age and brave beyond his years - became a shield for the smaller children, gatekeeping recognizable threats, or fighting for us.
My grandmother was the youngest of her sisters, and so the children of her sisters were swept into the crack-cocaine crisis ahead of Dietrick’s older brothers. Our many second degree cousins were left to raise themselves in a dystopian environment where sexual abuse, incest, and extreme violence were rampant. During a visit to one of their households, Uncle Dee and I followed our cousin to his bedroom where he offered to ‘show us something.’ Upon entering his room, Nickamar shut the door behind us, turned off the lights, and tackled me onto his filthy bare mattress. He intended to rape me, as I’m sure had been done to him, but had sorrily misread my Uncle Dee. I was unharmed, and no cousin dared to try that again.
Dietrick always found reasons to laugh, shortly after the worst was over. Not just regular laughter, Uncle Dee incited the sort of roaring that expelled all the tears a shocked nervous system would have otherwise held back.
When one of our elder cousins intentionally set his head on fire at a Fourth Of July celebration, eight-year-old Dietrick made the comparison to our favorite Garbage Pail Kids card. That probably sounds disturbing to people who were born to better circumstances, but for us - laughter was the strongest medicine we had access to. Dietrick had a keen eye and a quick wit, ‘Uncle’ Jessie’s resemblance to Adam Bomb was the best thing that happened that day. Frankly, we’d witnessed far worse by then.
There was a time when two of my uncles had burst into my grandmother’s kitchen through the garage door to snatch Uncle Dee and I from the table where we were eating cereal. High on drugs, his eldest brother put a butcher knife to seven-year-old Dietrick’s neck. The other brother, my favorite adult uncle before then, did the same to me. They wanted money, and threatened to slash our throats if my frazzled grandmother didn’t get it quickly enough. I remember my grandmother’s purse in her hands, and the panic in her voice - worried she didn’t have enough to stop them.
I have no recollection of laughing about that incident, and unfortunately I still cry about it sometimes. What I do clearly remember is my uncle Dee and I swearing never to use drugs, because we had seen it change the people we loved and admired, into demons. I know we made that pledge with equal conviction, and I regret not being wise enough then to recognize what would inevitably undermine my uncle’s. Dietrick’s father was in the home, my mostly lovable grandpa George. George was a fisherman ‘from Louisiana by way of Mississippi.’ He was an airforce veteran, a maintenance worker, and an alcoholic who functioned too well to scare Dietrick away from liquor.
When, at thirteen, Dietrick began sharing cold beers with George in the summer, or while watching a football game together in fall and winter - my grandmother took no issue with it. Coming from her background and era, this seemed innocent; even idyllic as bonding time between father and son. It was just beer. When it started being more than beer, it was only in small amounts; and my grandmother was more grateful to see her husband spending time with their son, than she was alarmed by the context. As Dietrick lost interest in school, drinking more at home with his father - my grandmother overlooked the correlation and underestimated its implications. Perhaps overwhelmed, she mothered very little and ‘bibled’ a lot, obsessively reading and highlighting scriptures.
Dietrick dropped out of school entirely by the time he was supposed to start high school. At this point, he already needed rehab for alcoholism - but my grandmother didn’t understand that. Coming from her simple southern background, her focus shifted to his churchgoing habits and whether he’d find a nice girl to start a family with. So when 18-year-old Dietrick met a girl a few years older than him and got her pregnant - my grandmother was relieved to see her son’s life find purpose. He was going to be a father now, and his pregnant girlfriend moved into Dietrick’s bedroom. While a sober father might have offered some guidance on this stage of manhood, grandpa George didn’t do anything without liquor. So it was that an ongoing drunken celebration, remiss of needed counsel, is what Dietrick got.
Dietrick’s girlfriend and their baby became his entire world, which would have been beautiful had he found his place in it, before them. He lovingly cared for their son while his girlfriend took classes toward a nursing degree. When she came home, he only wanted time with her; loving her with enormous intensity and adoration. She was all he had, literally, and that was problematic for obvious reasons. When his girlfriend completed her nursing degree, she - understandably - left him, taking their child with her. A devastated 20ish Dietrick took to drinking heavily with his father. Shortly after that, his older brothers showed up, offering a drunk and depressed Dietrick a nail for his coffin. They were no longer using crack cocaine, but had graduated to crystal meth.
Dietrick’s following years are the story of an addict who remained kind, loving, and full of humor - and who died violently in the presence of his older brothers. The same ones that had threatened to cut his throat when he was seven-years-old.
Dietrick never had a chance to be anything for himself. Those who only knew him in passing, and as an addict might have said he wasn’t anything at all. I have struggled with this awareness since the night of November 22nd in 2021, when I learned of his disturbing death. As someone who sees accountability as a superpower, I can’t find any sane intelligent basis to hold Dietrick responsible for his life. He was the casualty of an attack on our family that probably began at least a few centuries ago, somewhere in Africa, when our ancestors were sold into slavery and all the horrors that followed.
Was their destined legacy better before that historic betrayal? I don’t know. Whose fault is the big bad now? If I allow myself to think critically, the hard truthful answer is that - logically and constructively - no one can be blamed. The short of it is that alcohol had poisoned Dietrick’s brain at the start of adolescence, and then meth took over from there. He was tall, handsome, naturally athletic - but of compromised motivation, exceptionally witty, charming, and good natured. My grandmother always said he had the hands of a pianist, and I do remember his lovely unweathered hands. His earthly potential will remain unknown.
Peace doesn’t accompany death in absolutes. I leave the possibilities of the unknown open, hoping that one day relief will find its way to me through them. In the meantime, I defer to childhood fairytales about Jesus. Religion isn’t required to see their relevance to ill fated lives. What did Jesus get to be, but a messenger, source of love, and protector for others? Remembering that the others were the weakest in the community; the dirty, shunned, and vulnerable. That was me, my siblings, and our cousins. Did Christ, as he later became known, have any control over his arrival and departure from earth? How much did he suffer? As far as can be seen with mortal eyes, his parents failed him with the best of intentions.
I would have been more broken without my Uncle Dee. Were they to think about it, I’m sure several of my cousins and siblings have their own Dietrick stories that would lead them to the same conclusion about themselves. He mattered, his life was important.
As part of his legacy; I will pass on at least two important lessons to anyone who will hear me. Never take for granted the time you have to help a loved one who needs it. I truly thought I’d have time to help him, I was wrong. For people who are vulnerable to addiction; ALL addictive substances are gateways, waiting for the right time to swing the wrong doors wide open.
Replaying in my head often is something he said to me when I started exploring my biological father’s genealogy.
“You know what all those people have in common?” He quietly checked my misguided enthusiasm.
“What?”
“They’re all dead. Focus on the people who are here now.” He gently tapped my nose with his graceful forefinger.
He was right until he was no more, because he will never be dead to me, nor any of us who knew his love. None of us outlives our stories, whether credited or not. To live even for a moment is to touch the lives of others and have a place in their story and all that follows. Dietrick had forty-three years and 364 days to do that, and he succeeded - even creating a son in that time. His story is never-ending, and that inspires me to look for reasons to laugh, believing that in ways yet unknown - he is still with me.
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