First Person: A Father’s Love

The writer, Paul Kandarian (right), with his son, Paul. Photography courtesy of Paul Kandarian

My boy is dead.

Walking into my son’s room in my shabby apartment one gray morning fifteen or so years ago — seeing him in bed on his back, eyes closed, unmoving torso slightly elevated on pillows, a sheet of vomit caked in a gruesome plume down the Boston Bruins jersey I had gotten him during his first stint at rehab — that was my reaction.

My boy is dead.

I screamed his name and the split second of time that elapsed before he drowsily awakened from a drug-induced slumber to show signs of life was the longest split second of my life.

The younger Paul holds a stuffed tiger from the writer’s youth. Photography courtesy of Paul Kandarian

My son, Paul, I am very happy to say up front, is very much alive. The Army veteran of the Afghanistan war is a former opioid and heroin addict in long-term recovery, sober and doing well, working as a counselor — a vocation many recovering addicts pursue — for at-risk kids at a New Hampshire high school. The demons that consumed and nearly killed him are long subdued but ever-present; recovery is an ongoing process, and even if you succeed in managing them, they are forever looking over your shoulder, waiting for an opportunity to devour you once again.

I’m also happy to say my son’s life was saved in no small way thanks to the compassion and expertise of folks at the Providence VA Medical Center in Providence (where, coincidentally, my World War I veteran grandfather died at age eighty-eight in 1978). The VA system often gets a bad rap because it is understaffed and its workers underpaid, but, to me anyway, they are the best.

In those brutal, dark days, many people ignorant of the disease of addiction told me I should do the tough-love thing — abandon my son. But I stood by him, doing what I could, giving him a place to live, food to eat and constantly fighting with him to get clean.

If nothing else, I figured if he was gonna die from drugs, I would be the one to find him. I would be the one to cradle him, to cry over him, to scream his name and my pain to the unseeing heavens. I wanted to be there for him — I had to and was always going to be — no matter that our combined struggle was tearing us apart, separately and together.

The writer with his two children, Paul and Jessica, when they were young. Photography courtesy of Paul Kandarian

You wanna talk about tough love? You tell me what love is tougher than that.

He’d been twisting in and out of the revolving rehab door for some time, a hopeful then agonizing cycle of getting better, then worse. He got himself clean at one point when I was away on a trip, going cold turkey and fighting the dope sweats for days on end. Once he was clean, he joined the Army’s 10th Mountain Division and went to war, seeing and doing things no young man should ever see or do: He watched a total of six Army brothers die, and once pulled a buddy’s IED-shattered body parts out of a tree.

When he got home, the grandparents he adored — my folks — were dying and passed four weeks apart. He plunged back into addiction, nearly dying any number of times — including in my apartment that morning long ago.

I finally convinced him to go to the Providence VA, where he’d been before. We went. We waited. Withdrawal set in. He rushed out of the hospital. I followed, begging him to return. He balked, saying he’d go back, but he had to go get a fix, to “get normal,” as addicts say.

And could I give him $40 for it. My son was asking me for money to buy the drug that could kill him.

Paul’s son, Paul, getting his photo taken for COAAST. Photography courtesy of Paul Kandarian

I demurred, angry and defiant, distinctly recalling leaning on my car on that cold, gray November day in a VA parking area, weak in the knees, soul imploding, my world suddenly gone surreal and void of any sense, or other people; it felt like it was just my son and I alone on the planet, bargaining with one another. I begged him not to ask me to do this; he begged back, assuring me this was it, he’d get help.

A promise made that was a promise broken countless times before.

I gave him the money and waited. The hour or so it took him to shoot up and return to me burned like hellfire in my soul. But he came back and went in and the VA worked its medical magic, and combined with his strength and desire to get his life back, he got clean.

That was in 2014. He’s been sober ever since.

The writer participates in a panel discussion with Creating Outreach About Addiction Support Together following a performance of Resurfacing at the Providence VA. Photography courtesy of Paul Kandarian

Not long after, as an actor I joined a Rhode Island-based nonprofit — Creating Outreach About Addiction Support Together (COAAST), that has since become 2nd Act in Boston — and did original plays about addiction over the next six years, reaching thousands and thousands of Rhode Island kids in hopes of connection, of making an impact, of letting them know they are not alone. As an actor, I know it’s the most important work I will ever do.

In that time in our lives, my son and I also created a two-man play called Resurfacing, working with our nonprofit and the Harvard Medical School’s Health Story Collaborative. I played myself and an actor played my son. We staged it four times, the first three at Harvard, Boston College and Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Providence — and the last at the Providence VA, the entity that helped save Paul’s life.

The crowd, friends, medical personnel and the people who worked to get him clean watched our play and cried. As did I. My son was in the audience as well and when we hugged each other later, I don’t think we ever loved each other more.

The pandemic shelved that play, and it’s been dormant ever since. I hope to get it back on its feet again, as a beacon of hope for those battling the disease of addiction and as an ongoing thanks to the Providence VA.

They saved my boy’s life, after all. And mine as well.

The writer, Paul Kandarian, with his son Paul, daughter Jessica, and grandson Mikey, on Father’s Day in 2025. Photography courtesy of Paul Kandarian