Every Junkie's Like A Setting Sun

Wifey and I met Lois when she and her UM Art Professor Carlos moved across the street after Manny and Lujean sold their post Andrew renovated house.  Carlos was a proud Peruvian artist, and Lois was a LA girl -- Stanford educated.  Their two boys were close in age to the Ds.

The two moved here from Champaigne, IL.  Carlos was offered a position teaching Art, and Lois became Chair of English at Palmer, a private school in South Dade.  We became good neighbors quickly -- I've always dug teachers and university professors, and when a now estranged family member was looking for his first teaching job, Lois hired him.

Two students entered Palmer, and had some troubles.  Their Dad happened to be a very well known basketball coach, a Tony Soprano -like guy who gets stuff done.  He first hired Lois to privately tutor his kids, and they thrived.  So the coach made Lois an offer she couldn't refuse -- he convinced her to leave her job at the school, doubling or tripling her salary, I forget, to tutor the kids full time at her house.  She did this for awhile, banking the money all the while.

When the coaches kids graduated, Lois took her gains and started an academy -- to fill a niche.  Turns out there wasn't a good local alternative for local rich kids who got booted from the known array of private schools, like Palmer, Ransom, and Gulliver.  These kids had to be home schooled, or sent off to boarding places.  Lois saw the opportunity and grabbed it -- starting an academy in Palmetto Bay.  It thrived.

Most of the students were behavioral problems or drug addicts.  Lois and her staff got most of them back on track.  She and Carlos divorced, and Lois remarried a very nice fellow, who taught at her school -- he was a retired military man.  Wifey and I had them over once -- we planned to get together again, but Lois sold the school and moved to Orlando.  Her oldest son had gotten a great gig as a musician with a touring company, and they were based near Disney.  Plus, by selling her Miami house and business, and moving North, she was able to greatly increase her lifestyle.  Miami has gotten so damn expensive.

Anyway, Lois and I follow each other on FaceBook.  Over the weekend, she had a very sad post -- saying she was heartbroken.  One of her former students, a young man, now 25 named Eric, had died.  It wasn't clear how, but it was either suicide or drug overdose.

The young fellow's name was familiar to Wifey and me, but we didn't know them well.  I went to his FaceBook page.  He was handsome.  His posts were those of a bright and articulate young fellow.  He attended and then dropped out of UCF.  In January, he moved to Delray Beach.  That was telling -- young people tend to move to Delray and the area for a sad reason:  it has become a center for drug addicts.  Over the past 15 years or so, a bunch of group homes have opened in the older part of town -- away from the ocean, but near booming Atlantic Avenue.

I noticed this during my Mom's final years there.  When we'd go to a restaurant, there would be a lot of young folks crowding the local coffee shops -- many tatooed and pierced.  Years ago, a friend who has been in recovery for a long while told me if one ever wants to meet local addicts -- go to the coffee houses.  Nicotine and caffeine are the only drugs addicts are allowed to have -- so if you see a young, tatooed person smoking and drinking coffee at one of these places, you wouldn't likely lose money betting they had a substance issue -- unless they were heavy metal musicians, and then you'd be certain they had one.

So the move to Delray was telling.  But just last week, Eric posted lovely photos, of himself on a cliff.  And now he is gone.

I just thought about the pain his family must suffer.  It's awful.  Such a waste and tragedy.  The sun really set on them.