Tara McGuire - Holden, After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose

holden after & before

Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose

Tara McGuire

HOLDEN AFTER & BEFORE

Copyright 2022 by Tara McGuire

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.

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A passage from this book (pp.2628) appeared in slightly different form in the anthology Always With Me: Parents Talk About the Death of a Child (Demeter Press, 2018) as the essay Sorrow Seasons.

Harvest Moon

Words and Music by Neil Young

Copyright 1992 Hipgnosis Side A and Silver Fiddle Music

All Rights Administered by Hipgnosis Songs Group

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC

Scenario

Words and Music by John Davis, Ali Jones-Muhammad, Malik Taylor, Bryan Higgins, James Jackson and Trevor Smith

Copyright 1992 by Universal Music - Z Tunes LLC, Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, East Coast Stomp Music, Jelly-Tea Marijuana Music and Tziah Music

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International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved

Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC

Reunited

Words and Music by Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren

Copyright 1978, 1979 UNIVERSAL - POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. and PERREN-VIBES MUSIC, INC.

All Rights Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL - POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC.

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC

Comfortably Numb

Words and Music by Roger Waters and David Gilmour

Copyright 1979 Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd. and Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd.

All Rights for Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd. Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC

All Rights for Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd. Administered by Concord Copyrights c/o Concord Music Publishing LLC

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC

Lyrics from Druggernaut Jug Fuck by Agoraphobic Nosebleed are reprinted with permission of Scott Hull.

Poem from The Essential Rumi (Harper, 1995) is reprinted with permission of translator Coleman Barks.

Front cover flap photograph by Nicole Muoz. Back cover photographs by (top to bottom, left to right): Nicole Muoz, Emily Vineberg, Tara McGuire, Sail137. Photograph on p.1 by Nicole Muoz. Photographs appear with permission of photographers.

Cover and text design by Jazmin Welch

Edited by Catharine Chen

Proofread by Alison Strobel

Printed and bound in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Title: Holden after & before : love letter for a son lost to overdose / Tara McGuire.

Other titles: Holden after and before

Names: McGuire, Tara, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220206996 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220207097 | ISBN 9781551528939 (softcover) | ISBN 9781551528946 (HTML)

Subjects: LCSH: McGuire, Tara. | LCSH: McGuire, HoldenDeath and burial. | LCSH: Parents of drug addictsCanadaBiography. | LCSH: Grief. | LCSH: ChildrenDeath. | LCSH: DrugsOverdose.

Classification: LCC BF575.G7 M34 2022 | DDC 155.9/37092dc23

For Holden, who occupies my mind,and Cam and Lyla, who hold my hands.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

J.D. SALINGER, The Catcher in the Rye

They told me his body lay on a mattress in a room with a window and a brick wall. They told me he was covered, and peaceful. They told me he spoke of love that night, that he laughed. They told me he made plans for tomorrow before he closed his eyes.

The next morning, in the warm heart of summer, my sons body lay cool and slack, the scaffolding that had held up his being for twenty-one years now absent. When his soul flew, the tent poles collapsed. Only a quiet skin inscribed with language remained.

And questions.

Since then I have learned that dead children are not bound by earthly constraints. The stubborn ones disregard the limitations of oxygen and blood. I hold my son now, as I did for his breathing years, and ask him how such a beautiful choir could be so abruptly halted. From raucous, full-throated chorus to echoes.

If I listen, if I listen very closely, he tells me. He tells me in the space just before a thought. He tells me inside the ripe combustion chamber of an idea. There is a place deeper than marrowit aches. That is where he tells me.

Though he is gone, he is not going away. I smell Holden in the linen closet; I dream him in the pink dawn; I recognize the line of his jaw on a crowded street corner and circle the block. For me, the possibility of Holden still exists.

Once, I found him in the urgent spring lilacs at the back corner of the yard, where the rotten fence post had fallen over. I definitely see him in the electric zings of colour scrawled on concrete walls downtown. I hear him in the Neil Young song I rocked him to as a baby, Harvest Moon.

Come a little bit closer

Hear what I have to say

Just like children sleeping

We could dream this night away

Because Im still in love with you

I want to see you dance again

Because Im still in love with you

On this harvest moon

He is so many songs.

And yet, my first-born child remains swirling smoke. My hand passes straight through.

There is no way to make sense of Holdens gaping absence. But I have too much love left unspent to let him be. So I dig. I assume and I sleuth and I speculate and I make phone calls. I close my eyes and wonder where it all began. I obsess. I think too much, and loop back, and zigzag like a hound on a scent. At times I see it all as if I were there.

There is memory, which is fallible, and there is also a fat file of papers in a drawer: reports, evidence, scribbled notes, emails from doctors, redacted police files, and a one-page document from the coroners office. There are photographs and screenshots. I have trolled long nights through the false rooms of social media. I have met many of Holdens friendsfellow graffiti artists, former co-workers, roommates, acquaintances, and lovers. They grieve Holden in their unique ways while navigating their own lives in this increasingly confusing and difficult world. Some try to exonerate themselves, some slough off his death like peeling sunburned skin, others drown in the guilt of retrospect. They all hurt, but some of them helped me plaster the cracks in his story.