We once knew this guy named Gerry twenty years ago he was so handsome and every girl wanted to be near him. So much has changed for Gerry and it is very sad really. He went from being a handsome, smart, sweet guy to a man who is falling apart from his addiction to crack.
My aunt Trish had always been a very close friend of Gerry’s, even trying to take him in to her home about twenty years ago to help him. At that point he was just experimenting with pot and booze and sometimes coke, but most people could see he was choosing the wrong path in life.
Every once in a while my aunt would run into Gerry, but for me I haven’t seen him in a good twenty years. Last week we were sitting on my aunt’s porch and I saw this scary, dirty, long haired, no teethed man riding a bike. I commented on how sad it was to see someone like that in that bad of a shape obviously from drugs.
Trish quickly told me that who we were looking at was Gerry! I couldn’t believe my eyes, I was so saddened by this information I actually wanted to cry. Trish told me it was so bad that he had lost all of his teeth due to drugs, his hair was falling out, his face was concaved and he also talks to himself. He looked over at us sitting there and threw us a wave.
Seeing him quickly reminded Trish about an incident that happened in the past month with Gerry. Trish told me one morning she was going out to her truck (which is parked in the lane behind her house) to run some errands. She was getting her keys ready head down trying to find the right button on the clicker and sees a set of legs sticking out from under her truck. She screams and jumps back two feet swearing and at the same moment the man crawls out from under the truck saying “Trish, Trish it’s me Gerry, I was just hanging out here don’t panic”. :Trish I’m not doing nothing I’m not touching your truck”. Trish, just having the shit scared out of her yells at him “I don’t give a shit that it’s you Gerry you dumb ass, what if I didn’t see you there and ran you the hell over”?
She then started yelling and lecturing him all at the same moment, quickly realizing that nothing is going to help this sad excuse for a man. He is lost, gone, no longer even a quarter of what he used to be. The sadness overwhelmed her as she told him to get out and not to come back again. She was taken back to a time where this man was so much and had so much to offer the world, yet look at him now. He lower his head, nodded and with that he was on his way out of the lane, crack pipe held tightly in his hand.
Trish has told me how much she would love to help Gerry but knows that he is too far gone. Finding him under her truck and invading her space like that was just too much. Having a sister that is a crack addict, she knows that if she allows Gerry to feel like he can be close to her that she just may find him sleeping on the porch next time.
Beckie
