Mom Who Lost Son To Drugs: 'I Tried To Love the Demons Out Of Him'

It was an agony no mother should ever have to endure.

On June 8, it will be three years since Cathy Lombardo of East Patchogue found her son dead, the victim of years of drug abuse. He died four days before his 21st birthday, after choking on his own vomit.

But rather than giving in to the overwhelming grief, Lombardo has dedicated her life to helping other teens, sharing her son's story so that other young people might be saved.

Lombardo is a scheduled keynote speaker Monday night at Riverhead High School, during "Rx for Disaster: Get Smart about Prescription Painkillers and Over the Counter (OTC) Drugs," a community forum hosted by the Riverhead Community Coalition for Safe and Drug-Free Youth. The event takes plae at 7 p.m. at Riverhead High School.

Also scheduled to speak is Dr. Alexis Hugelmeyer, Lombardo's sister-in-law, Director of Community Education at Peconic Bay Medical Center and local family physician. Lombardo's brother, Michael Hugerlmeyer is also an assistant principal at Riverhead High School.

Describing the day she found her son Philip dead, after his eight year battle with drug addiction, Lombardo's voice broke.

Her son, she said, had been living in an apartment next door to their family home -- he was no longer allowed inside and was not speaking to his father or brother, she said.

Although Lombardo, a nurse, said she and her son texted often and were in constant communication, she hadn't gone to check on him the night before. "The next morning, I went there at 6:15 a.m.," she said. "I found him lying on the couch. In my heart, I knew he was dead, but I started screaming his name and he didn't wake up."

Feeling no pulse, Lombardo frantically began CPR, even though she knew her son was already gone. "I pulled him off the couch and started pounding on his chest. The moment I put my lips to his lips to give him breath, black liquid came out and covered him, and me, and I knew he had drowned in his own vomit."

After calling 911, help came, she said. "I kept going, and going, trying to save him," she said. "Someone had to pull me off of him. I kept screaming, 'Is he dead? Is he dead?' Finally they put him in a body bag and zipped it up. I opened it and kissed him on the forehead and told him it was okay. It was just him and me."

When they drove her son away, Lombardo said, "I stood in the middle of the street and watched until I couldn't see him anymore." Distraught, Lombardo refused to wash the shirt, covered with her son's vomit, for over a year.

His death ended her son's harrowing journey down the dark path of drug addiction. From the time he was born, Lombardo said, he was hyperactive, and became obsessed with whatever activity he was currently interested in. 

At 14, he started hanging out with kids who smoked pot. "It wasn't a big deal -- everyone smokes pot and drinks, but with a personality like my son's, he had to do everything in excess. He drove 90 miles an hour. His brain was going too fast," she said.

As his addiction escalated, Lombardo said her son started hanging out with "people you wouldn't otherwise want around you."

But, as a mother, Lombardo said she was in denial. "As parents, we tend to know what's happening but won't admit it, and will not accept it. You tell yourself it's not so bad, so that you can go on with your life."

Eventually, she said, her son's addiction altered the entire family dynamic.

Her son eventually began experimenting with pills. "He and his girlfriend took a bunch of pills and she had to have her stomach pumped," she said. 

At 15 or 16, Philip began experimenting with cocaine and mushrooms. "He would take any kind of pill," she said. "He was what they call a junk addict, meaning he'd take anything -- even a heart pill -- just to get high."

Despite his spiraling descent into the despair of addiction, Lombardo said her son and she remained exceptionally close. "I tried to love the demons out of him," she said. "He wasn't the type of addict who ran away. He called me six times a day and said, 'I love you, Mom.'" 

Eventually, her son started stealing to support his habit, Lombardo said; he began hanging out in heroin dens, where a dealer would have guns, and addicts would go to snort or inject the drug and get high. "You have no idea what's out there," she said. "He never shot up, just smoked or snorted it."

Philip, she said, was a "functioning addict," who went to school and got a job with an insulation firm. 

After doing cocaine for three years, Philip began using opiates and other drugs, including oxycodone, Roxicontin, or "roxies," Molly, ectasy, and Xanax.

"He was heavily into Xanax," she said. "He could do 90 pills in three days. When it got too expensive, he stole from everybody, including drug dealers -- anyone that wouldn't shoot him, he told me," she said.

One day, her son was taking Xanax every five minutes, and then, he smoked four bags of heroin. "My husband found him unconscious. He probably should have died that day," Lombardo said.

After a stint in rehab a 17, Philip relapsed, continuing to work and fuel his raging addiction to heroin and other drugs. At 16, he told his younger brother Tommy that if he died, he wanted a surfer's burial, with his ashes scattered in the ocean Lombardo said.

By 20, her son "was completely out of control," she said. "He was functioning at work but he couldn't wait to get home to get high." 

Violent when using drugs, although he never hit his family, Philip punched holes through walls and destroyed property, Lombardo said.

But through it all, Lombardo's deep love for her son remained steadfast. "We were best friends," she said. "I did enable him -- but if I had thrown him out on the street, how can you live with that?"

When she tried to drive him to a sober house, Lombardo said Philip jumped out of the moving car and slit both wrists. He was hospitalized briefly and next, got a DUI.

On the last day of her son's life, Lombardo drove him to work. "I hugged him and kissed him and told him that I loved him, and he told me that he loved me," she said.

At her job in the hospital, Lombardo texted her son and found it strange when he did not immediately text back. When she called him, she could tell he was high.

The next morning, he was gone.

Philip's ashes were scattered at Davis Park, with his friends forming a circle of love. After his ashes were tossed into the wind, his friends surfed in his memory. "It was the most gorgeous service I've ever witnessed," Lombardo said. "I made a wreath of 21 white flowers for his birthday that I threw out into the water."

Of her son's death, Lombardo said, "You have to look it not as a loss for you, but as a blessing for him. He's out of his misery."

Her son, she believes, would never have escaped the vise of drug addiction.

Still, the days are dark. "Not a day goes by that I don't think of him. Before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning. I can't see the ocean, or a surfboard, without thinking of him."

She added, "They say time heals all wounds. But it doesn't. I can't live in the past, because he's there. I can't live in the future, because he's not there."

All she can do, Lombardo said, is live one day at a time, finding healing solace in the sunshine or in the peace found in music or the comfort of her garden. "It's bittersweet," she said. Her younger son, Tommy, is flourishing at college in Florida, something that brings joy.

Lombardo believes her son Philip's spirit lives inside of her, and speaks through her when she goes to warn other teens of the dangers of drug addiction. "I am just a vessel," she said. "He is with me. He's going to try to continue to do good, through me, because he couldn't do it when he was here."

Losing her son, Lombardo said, "took away a major piece of who I am. But in a way I'm glad, because I wanted to be with him." 

Looking back, Lombardo said even when everyone else had given up on her boy, she never turned away. "I almost feel as though it were a book that began with me. We were so close to the end -- he told me everything. In the end, it was like I shut the book. We were so deeply connected."

The pain, Lombardo said, is palpable, even almost three years after her son's death. "I won't see him getting older, having kids. The seasons are very difficult. Not anniversaries, or birthdays -- not Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's the seasons, when winter is over and life begins again in spring -- it's like, 'Where is he?'"

Her voice filled with tears, Lombardo said, "Giving birth to a child changes your entire life. And when a child dies, your entire life is changed."