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How Losing My Son (And Everything Else) Helped Me Build a Life Worth Living
A Memoir by Dwight Gillespie
“You know you have to be very talented to be a writer, and I just don’t think you are. You’d better have a back-up plan for when you fail at this.”
My Mother — during any one of her 3,612 “pep talks” when I was nine years old
Whatever I’ve done in life has come at a cost. As you read on, you’ll understand that most of these costs were not calculated in advance. Hell, I never even considered the price. If I thought through half the shit—drugs, marriages, being in love after a couple of days and deciding it would be great to live together—I never would have done it. There’s one exception to this – the one thing I paid a heavy price for that I would do all over again. My son. My beautiful boy, Luke. He was—and is—the light of my life. He died in a car accident just before his seventh birthday. I’m telling you this now because his death isn’t a plot point in a story, and it shouldn’t be a spoiler. It’s a thing that happened, in the way that senseless things happen in this world. Losing that boy was akin to having my soul ripped out. It took several years of self-abuse—followed by several more years of cleaning up and soul searching to find peace with his loss. In the end, it was Luke who taught me how to come to terms with his passing and live a decent life without trying to destroy myself. It was his innocence and love that helped me understand my purpose. I don’t think anyone can be absolutely certain of their purpose, but perhaps mine was to tell others who have lost loved ones that it’ll be okay. The love you felt for them will never die—that love stays until you, too, breathe your last. I choose to share my story and Luke’s story because I want you to know that calamities are survivable. You can have a life after seemingly losing it all. I firmly believe this.
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Dwight Gillespie
$19.95 paperback, $8.49 e-book ISBN: 978-1-73781-250-0
April 28, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A gritty memoir focuses on a man who visited hell on Earth before he found inner peace.
Gillespie had enough reasons to follow his father’s example and check out of a life full of pain. At least once the author came frighteningly close to doing just that. The fourth of seven children, he was born in 1963 into a dysfunctional family. According to Gillespie, his mother was an unsupportive alcoholic, and his father was a compulsive gambler fond of horse racing. The author began his foray into substance abuse when he was 7 or 8 years old. This was no gentle first sip. He downed a full quart of beer despite the “horrible” taste. Alcohol became his go-to escape for decades. Drugs were added along the way—cocaine, prescription pain killers, and heroin. He describes himself as the favorite of a father who possessed more than a streak of cruelty, expressed through merciless “jokes” at the expense of his children. His father committed suicide when Gillespie was 18 years old, just two weeks after the teen’s high school graduation. It was a devastating loss, but a greater tragedy lay in the author’s future. In November 2005, his 7-year-old son, Luke, the love of his life, was killed in an automobile accident. Both Gillespie and his wife, LM, were seriously injured. Six weeks after Luke’s death, the couple’s unborn daughter died in utero. An able and garrulous storyteller prone to rough language and repetition, Gillespie graphically brings readers on his journey through despair and self-destruction. “Losing the kids,” he writes, “was like the detonation of an atomic bomb. When it first goes off, it sucks everything in, bringing it all together, and then there’s the ensuing fireball and blast that blows everything apart.” If the stories from his childhood are harrowing, his vivid descriptions of his alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental breakdown after Luke’s death are even more difficult to read. But this dark, dispiriting account is lightened by Gillespie’s wickedly sarcastic sense of humor and his persistent attempts to crawl out of the morass.
A poignant tribute to the author’s son and an unflinching, inspiring self-portrait.