The Beautiful Kind

My mom got married at age 19 in 1966. Right about the time she got married was the time she started breaking down.

She was a nurse before I was born. She worked on a pediatrics ward, and back then there was no regulating, so when you gave a kid a pain pill, you just broke it in half and threw the other half away. I’m not sure how her habit started, but at first she started popping the half she was supposed to discard. Then, she began taking the whole pain pill, instead of giving it to the children.

She was finally caught shooting up in the bathroom by her head nurse and was arrested. I have a copy of her mug shot; she’s still wearing her uniform. That was the end of her nursing career.