I Watched My Husband Die and Come to Life in a Single Day
A war hero’s battle with opioid addiction
It had become normal to watch Cleve nod off. He was usually in the middle of doing something: smoking a cigarette, eating, assembling a model airplane. When he awoke, his body would quake back to life. His eyes would snap open and scan the room, pupils the size of moons, as he tried to remember where he was, when he was, what he was doing. He’d reach into his back pocket where he kept a small towel, bring it to his forehead and pat it dry. Often, he was not quite awake. His eyelids would sag and he’d mumble some nonsense: Don’t worry, I got you. I got you. Hey! I didn’t… please, stop.
“Baby, wake up. Baby,” I’d say, shaking him. He’d wake up for real and tell me so, his neck loose like a bobblehead’s.
There is no moment I can point to and say, That was when! That was when his addiction began! And that was the problem. He was on pain meds from the beginning. First, a morphine syrette to the leg on the battlefield, then Dilaudid hooked to his body once he was back in the states, then morphine in pill form after they had to amputate his leg, then a combination of Lortab and Percocet after they noticed signs of addiction and, finally, Oxycontin when he became addicted to that, too. Years of pain meds, every day, multiple times a…
