Friends from the past..

The other day Amy and I talked a while and she asked me about a girl that used to work for me. Jenny, she was a super bright young girl (she’s older than me), came from one for the prominent families here and married into one as well.
Status means nothing to drugs, her husband was just a dabbler in them when they first married “Oh, he smokes a little marijuana now and then”. A year later their first child arrived, the cutest little girl.
Being a huge football fans, they always managed to have football parties. No big deal, everyone has parties at one time or another, but you don’t lay your child on the floor and scatter 100 bills on her after winning the football pool and take pictures. The very sight of that sickened me and to this day I hate the movie with Demi Moore where she rolls in a bed of money. After that incident I knew things were going to go down hill for that clan.
A year later a son came into the mix -- still they didn’t settle down. The dad was arrested a few times for drug possession and DUI. One incident her husband had the kids in the car, running from the police as he tried to smoke the crack in his pipe. Her son told me “Daddy was driving so fast! Smoking that stuff and it stunk so badly!” A few run-ins with rehab and a couple slaps on the wrists for bad checks and what not it all turned for the worst, Jenny started missing work and if she was at work she was high. After multiple attempts to help her, I found I could do no more but to let her go.
Last Christmas she nearly broke into the house wanting me to buy a Toys R US gift card from her. I don’t have kids; I don’t need a 95 dollar gift card from there. She was messed up as she tried to explain to me why she needed the money. It broke my heart to see her like that, gaunt and pale, her shiny brown hair now dull and flat. Her whole spark in life was missing and her face vacant. After my third refusal to buy the card from her she left in a huff as I stood in my drive way dumbfounded.
This summer an eye opening experience for her family was made when they found her husband dead in the bed from an overdose of drugs. Her daughter refused to have anything to do with her and her kind hearted son was only confused more so.
Right now I think of those kids and what kind of Christmas they will be having this year without a father, and semi without a mother. I’ve heard they have moved in with parents of the husband and Jenny is trying to get straight.
I know there are sadder stories out there, which make me, worry more for the world.