WHEN it came time for the heartbroken parents to put the cause of death in to their 18-year-old daughter’s obituary, they did not hesitate: she died, they said, of a heroin overdose.
AP reports that Fred and Dorothy McIntosh Shuemake decided “not to worry about any finger-pointing, whispers or family stigma”.
“They directed the funeral home to begin (their daughter) Alison ‘s obituary by stating flatly that she died of a heroin overdose.”
“There was no hesitation,” Dorothy said. “We’ve seen other deaths when it’s heroin, and the families don’t talk about it because they’re ashamed or they feel guilty.
“Shame doesn’t matter right now.”
The couple said Alison had been the kind of kid who earned award certificates at high school, and whose favourite thing was a stuffed bunny named Ashley that said “I love you”.
Yet she fell to heroin, and her family said: “What really matters is keeping some other person, especially a child, from trying this … We didn’t want anybody else to feel the same agony and wretchedness that we’re left with.’”
Scott Gehring, who heads the Sojourner Recovery Services addiction treatment nonprofit in Butler County, praised the Shuemakes’ “strength and foresight to draw attention to heroin’s role,” the report says.
“That’s something that needs to happen. People die of overdoses and it gets swept under a rug,” Gehring said. “Until we as a society are willing to acknowledge that it is here and affecting all of us, we’re going to continue to see the death count rise.”
