The first thing that stands out in Gwen Knox’s home is the living room wall, stacked with shelves of books on everything from law to philosophy. The 71-year-old is a collector of words, often searching for the perfect poem for a situation.
It’s how she found “Let Me Fall All By Myself,” an anonymous poem about loving a child with addiction that she shared years ago with a friend in need. In December, she returned to the poem, but this time for herself. Her son Brian died of a heroin overdose on Dec. 30, and she had to write his obituary.
She spent four days composing the obituary and sent all 1,054 words, including the text of “Let Me Fall All By Myself” and a frank description of Brian’s path to addiction, to The Advocate.
“He just never seemed to get a break, always falling and having to pull himself out of one hole after another,” Knox wrote in the obituary, describing how her son went from a soccer-playing tween to dying at age 40. “He started experimenting with drugs in his teens and came to think that the only solution to whatever he was dealing with was drugs… When he was drug-free, he had to deal with all of the thoughts going through his head. Coping with life was not a skill that he ever acquired.”
As soon as it was posted online, the obituary began to spread—first across the country, then the world. Within the first two weeks, Knox received more than 300 emails from people who had read the obituary and reached out to the email address she appended to the last line.
“I never planned for anything this big. All I knew was, ‘Oh my God, an obituary has to be written,’” Knox says.
Since its posting, she’s gotten 700-plus emails and more than 750 notes in the obituary’s digital guestbook, which The Advocate has left open indefinitely.
One email came from a pharmacist in Staten Island, New York, whose husband got clean from drugs; the couple now has a 2-year-old daughter. Several emails have come out of Indiana, where an explosion of heroin use has led to 200 new cases of HIV. One came from an addict who wished her own mother would take away her daughters and “let her fall” so she could hit rock bottom and be forced to get clean. One came from a mother who had never told anyone that her daughter’s death was from an overdose—until she emailed Knox. Knox tries to respond to as many as she possibly can.
Gwen Knox in her backyard, where she does much of her reading and writing.
Here in Baton Rouge, the obituary has become part of the recovery community. Todd Hamilton, executive director of the O’Brien House treatment facility, says his staff designed a new program for families of addicts as a result, where copies of the writing will be passed out and used to discuss the struggle of loving—and losing—an addict.
“She expressed her grief so eloquently, in a way that really helped many people understand the pain and the loss associated with a death due to an overdose,” Hamilton says. “She was getting so much feedback from people, not only around town but around the world, that we saw there was a great deal of need to be addressed at the O’Brien House. Talking to her, we realized one of the things we might be able to do uniquely was to help families of addicts come to grips with the painful truth about addiction.”
What’s resonated most with these people, Knox says, is the unflinching honesty of the obituary.
“What I found out is that there’s so much shame connected to a drug overdose, and people were not talking about it,” Knox says. “What I feel the Holy Spirit did [when I was writing] was just to take the shield off and let me discuss the pain of the experience and the life of the person, just raw, to the point that it affected so many people.”
Brian’s overdose, Knox explains, doesn’t diminish his character. He burned bright, with a penchant for mischief and a way of making every person in his life feel important. He loved to cook, he worked hard, and he was always on the hunt to find an imported beer that his mother would actually like.
But there was a darkness underneath the bravado, splinters caused by an estrangement from his father and later his two children, as well as debt, anger and bitterness. He searched desperately for something to fill in the cracks.
Knox hopes the reach of the obituary helps other parents understand how not to enable an addiction like Brian’s before it’s too late. In the obituary, she wrote that she regretted cushioning Brian’s falls when he needed to face them.
“You’ve got to let them fall early and suffer their consequences, not let them fall, pick them up, let them fall, pick them up,” Knox says. “Let them fall, and don’t wait until they’re 40 years old and they’re falling and they can’t get up.”
An excerpt from
“Let Me Fall All By Myself”
Don’t stand in the place I am going to land so that you can break the fall
(allowing yourself to get hurt instead of me)
Let me fall as far down as my addiction is going to take me
Let me walk the valley alone all by myself
Let me reach the bottom of the pit
Trust that there is a bottom there somewhere even if you can’t see it
The sooner you stop saving me from myself
Stop rescuing me
Trying to fix my brokenness
Trying to understand me to a fault
Enabling me
The sooner you allow me to feel the loss and consequences
The burden of my addiction on my shoulders and not yours
The sooner I will arrive
And on time
Just right where I need to be
Now, sitting here in Knox’s living room, there’s a captivating, almost supernatural peace about her. It’s been mere months since she lost her son, but there’s a quiet sense of relief in knowing that the worst has already happened. And above all, there’s a new purpose. She knows Brian’s death hasn’t been in vain.
“I have always been a willing vessel for those who hurt,” Knox says.
At the time of our interview, she’s preparing to speak the next week at the first session of abuse counselor Roy Mitchell’s family outreach program inspired by the obituary.
“So many people need this, because they get so stuck, and they don’t know what to do. They don’t know if what they are feeling is normal,” she says.
In that living room, facing the library filling the back wall, if you turn 180 degrees, you’ll see an ’80s-era portrait propped up on an easel by the window. A younger Knox sits on the right side of the frame, wearing a brown skirt, her hair close-cropped.
Beside her are her three sons, the oldest standing on the left of the frame and the youngest sitting on a stool next to her. Behind the youngest is Brian, smiling broadly, a glint in his eye.
She remembers one email from a friend of Brian’s as she looks at that cheesy grin on her son’s face.
“He always talked about his ‘moms’ and how much he loved you and that he didn’t know where he would be without you,” the friend wrote. “I’m sure you already know this, but you did all that you could. And he knew how much you loved him.”
