After losing her son to an overdose, she’ll raise grandson

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Amy Stevenson will bury her son Friday, and maybe, for one day, the sorrow will nudge aside the worries.

For eight years the Pitcairn woman watched, listened, cried and sometimes shouted as Justin Michael Wright, 26, went from pills to heroin, got jobs and lost them, bounced in and out of rehabilitation facilities and courts, stole from her, tried medicationassisted treatment and, even a week ago, claimed that his efforts to get clean were going well.

From here on, she’ll worry instead about her son’s son, now in her care.

“He’s 7 months old and he’s the best thing ever,” she said Wednesday. But she’s raising him in a world that proved too much for her son. “I don’t know if I can do it again in this society. … I’m scared to death, first of all, since this child was born to two addicts, that he might have the chemical makeup of an addict.”

The child of a marriage that ended when he was a toddler, Justin Wright “went above and beyond to help other people,” said Ms. Stevenson, 49. The problem: “He didn’t feel good about himself.”

Hockey helped. “He and his friends, out in the street with a little net, would play for days,” and he played on school teams and in recreational leagues, his mother said. When the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009, she said, “He said that was the greatest day of his life.”

By that time, though, she figured he had some tough days ahead.

“He did start with pills. I’m not exactly sure which ones. Some so-called friend of his gave him some pills. And as we all know, they are too expensive.”