Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [101]
One day, Moon went over to Justin’s house and smelled a really awful odor when she walked into his bedroom. When she ripped the blanket back off his body, Justin’s leg was completely black. Moon knew what that smell was because she had taken care of Beth’s father several years ago when he became ill. Beth’s dad had developed gangrene twice. The first time, the doctors had to cut off his pinky toe, and the second time it was his big toe. Eventually, her father died from the infections. Moon instantly and quickly realized that Justin had a big problem. He had developed a bad case of gangrene.
After several weeks in the hospital and doses of various antibiotics, doctors told him they’d have to amputate his leg below his knee. The news was devastating to all of us. Justin was a really handsome, tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who had his entire future ahead of him. Since the accident, he had completely lost his smile, his boisterous laugh. As he lay in his hospital bed thinking about all of this, it was clear that Justin knew his whole life had been changed by choosing to get behind the wheel after drinking and the bad choices he’d made that led him there. It was a difficult realization that those choices had sent him spiraling into unbelievable negativity that would be extremely challenging to come back from.
When Justin got out of the hospital he moved in with this girl who was still living at home with her parents. Everyone was using Justin as the trash guy—they made him take out the garbage, do the dishes, run a few errands here and there, but nobody made him go out and get a real job. He started using his leg as an excuse to avoid having to face reality. He’d say things like “I can’t work because of my leg.” And for a while, everyone bought into it, placating him and pretending he was incapable of doing much more than he was doing because of his prosthetic leg.
His relationship started deteriorating as fast as his self-esteem. Eventually, Justin’s girlfriend kicked him out of her house. Beth somehow convinced him to come back to Hawaii and live with us so he could heal and get stronger. However, she was clear that he had to promise to stay close, work hard, and not go back to taking drugs. He promised us he wanted to change his ways, so we allowed him to come back.
It didn’t take long for Justin to break his promises. Shortly after he arrived, he ran off again in the middle of the night, without saying good-bye to Gary Boy. That was it. We had to wash our hands of Justin because he’d broken our son’s heart again, leaving us to pick up the pieces when Gary Boy asked questions about why he left. Gary thought he’d done something wrong to upset Justin. It’s hard to explain to a six-year-old that it wasn’t his fault, that Justin had adult problems that a little boy couldn’t possibly comprehend. Beth and I had a hard time coping whenever the subject came up, because we never had the right words to comfort our son or ourselves.
A year went by without any contact from Justin. He sent messages through Moon and other people we knew in common, but we wouldn’t even let him have our new phone numbers, because he wasn’t in a stable place in his life. We heard he was in another tumultuous relationship, and this time his girlfriend had called the cops on him over a money issue. That’s when Beth asked Moon to bring him to our house so we could talk to him. She was afraid that if we didn’t step in and help Justin do something with his life, we’d lose him once and for all. He’d either end up in prison or worse. It was clear he was lost, and would have no hope, no love, and no future unless we extended a hand.
When Justin showed up, he was a broken, ruined boy. His color was ashy, he’d lost a lot of weight, and he was missing the spark that made him Justin. No smile, no warmth. His years of constant disappointment, one after another, had taken a toll. He’d spent years running away from us after he wasn’t asked to come back to the