Poems, photography, and a mother’s need to remember rise from the ashes of addiction

Book compiled by Glen Lake mom Pat Miller, Confushun and Calm, honors her late son, Max

By Jacob Wheeler

Sue editor

Whenever I drive by our dear friend Pat’s house in Burdickville, between Inspiration Point and Trattoria Funistrada, I see her son Maximillian-Miguel Monroy-Miller shooting hoops in the front yard. Hip hop music pumps from the boom box on the front step, and as he drives to the open rim I hear him recite spoken-word poetry of the oppressed, as he laughs—Max’s wide-open belly laugh that endears him to everyone he meets.

Max the light-hearted kid who grew up playing at his grandmother Jeannette’s cabins on Big Glen Lake. Max the high school idol who starred on Glen Lake’s 1994 state championship football team and ran the floor as point guard on his Uncle Don Miller’s basketball squad. Max the Chicano activist who embraced his Mexican-American roots and his missing father’s family during politically awakened years at Michigan State University. Max the teacher who mentored and changed the lives of disadvantaged students from South Texas to Oakland. Max the party animal who drank hard, smoked weed, and fell into hard drugs.

Max who—unbeknownst to many who knew him in Leelanau County—struggled with addiction. He had been clean and sober for almost a year before he left California and returned to Michigan State in 2014 to get a PhD in Chicano Studies and Teacher Education. But the addiction pursued him, and he died of a drug overdose during Spring Break 2016 in East Lansing—five years ago this weekend. He was engaged at the time to marry fellow teacher Heather LaBerge.

Broken-hearted but inspired by her son and a spiral notebook he left behind at her house in Burdickville, Pat has self-published (with the help of Traverse City-based Mission Point Press) a book of Max’s poems, photography and drawings titled Confushun and Calm. The collection includes portraits of Max and colorful photos he shot in 2005 in the Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende. The book is artfully structured so that we first meet the love and lighter side of Max, then understand his politics and struggle to straddle both sides of his Chicano-white self, before we dive into his addiction and struggles and hear his whispered screams.

“I hope that anyone who reads Max’s poems will find insight and healing,” writes Pat in a foreword. “The battle with addiction needs to be fought on many fronts; at our borders, in schools, and within families, through education, therapy and medical research, in 12 Step and other programs. Most importantly, the fight can only be won in the hearts and minds of those who suffer from this devastating disease.”

“Helping others was Max’s passion. In sharing his story, I pray that someone who is suffering alone will reach out and find the love and support they need to recover. That would be the best legacy of Max.”

We caught up with Pat Miller—currently visiting friends in Florida—on this 5-year anniversary of Max’s death to hear how she’s doing and why she published this book, Confushun and Calm. You can purchase it on Amazon.com; Leelanau County bookstores will soon carry it as well.

Five years after Max’s death), how are you doing?

I think I’m doing really well. I think Max taught me to live my life to the fullest. I’m left with a lot. I love where I live, I’ve been able to retire. I have so many friends that love me, laugh with me, cry with me, share with me. Not unlike Max, I have a full, rich life. The only difference is that I don’t have a drug addiction. He had a full, rich life, too, but that interfered with it. I’m really good. I’ve learned that you have some kind of suffering that you live with. I have that. I have a sadness, not only that he’s gone but that he suffered. The idea that your kid suffers and you can’t fix it is horrible for a parent. I live with the fact that I couldn’t save him, that I miss him. That I did my absolute best to raise him and love him, and it couldn’t save him. Your children out there could still get hurt. I share this with a lot of people my age who have children and grandchildren. Some of them have also lost kids. There is pain and suffering in life. You learn to live with it and not let it overshadow all the good stuff. Waking up today in Florida, looking out at the beach, I felt lucky.

How are you marking this five-year anniversary of his death?

Last night (Friday) we had a gathering with friends. We had a reading from the book. We cried, we laughed. I’m so loved. A couple women who live down here were with me when I got the call that he died. We read a little from the book, and said his name. Then we put that away and ate tacos. Max liked that. We were a group of white people having tacos but it was important that I make salsa that’s hot. Max would really want that. I bought two jalapenos, and I made salsa for Max, and corn tortillas not flour tortillas.

Why did you compile and publish this book?

Because he left this spiral notebook. One year in between “Teach for America” and moving to California, he lived in East Lansing and wrote poems. Some were spoken-word political, some were about his addiction, some were funny. He left that notebook for me. I never looked at it closely. He compiled it but never got it out there. I felt like that was something he needed to do. He had photographs and drawings, too. I needed to put this together and get this out into the world. It just seemed like I was pulled to do that. It was hard for me to do this. There were many times in that whole process when I was mad at him. “You’re gone, and I have to do this for you.” Every step of the way someone helped me. It’s a book that keeps him alive in some way.

What impact do you hope the book will have?

That one person who struggles alone with addiction or any kind of suffering will reach out. The thing that killed Max was that all these people who loved him, they didn’t know. If one person calls and says “I’m in trouble. Help me.” That’s my hope. And that all people who knew him and loved him would have this treasure.

Does the stigma of addiction still exist? How is it changing?

I hope what I wrote, and what Joe Kelly (Minister of Friends of the Light, and family friend) wrote in the back of the book, helps people believe that it’s a disease. Alcohol and drug addiction are still somehow shame-based. And that’s why people hide it. If you had diabetes or cancer, you wouldn’t try to hide it. Many people Max knew when he tried cocaine tried it, but they aren’t dead. If you had that predisposition for addiction, you lose your choice. We don’t as a culture understand that it is a disease. I hope that grows and is more accepted. We need to treat it like a disease and not like a shameful failing or like a criminal activity.

What can you tell us about Max that the greater Glen Lake community might not know?

I don’t know if they know that part of him was so politically active as an educator. He got in almost 10 years of working with kids in middle schools and high schools. He has a following of kids from Texas to Oakland who are influenced by his love. He reached out and went above and beyond what normal people do. There was a beautiful woman, Denise, who came all the way from Texas to his memorial (at Old Settlers Park in 2017). Her family never left South Texas. He got her into a program at Michigan State for first-generation college students, and she stays in touch with me. She sent me a picture of her 2-year-old child holding Max’s book. Her life was changed by Max. She graduated from MSU, is now a teacher in Houston. Every day, she says, she teaches like Max. He didn’t just teach kids, he went to their houses, he met their families. He took that extra step.

What are the triggers each day that make you think of Max?

There are things in nature. Some days when I’m really missing him, feeling a distance from him, I ask him, I ask God, to give me a sign, because I need something more concrete. Then a red cardinal will come. We were having dinner with friends last night, I was talking with them about the book, at their table in the backyard. I looked up and on the top of the fence was a red cardinal. That’s the usual thing that comes. Often a red cardinal comes in Burdickville, too. Or I have chimes in the backyard that hang off an apple tree, and they just start ringing. I get distracted by my life and I’m not paying attention to him. That’s the theme for us. He wanted me to notice him and pay attention to him. I’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re still there. I’m glad you’re OK and not suffering.”

In what places do you see him when you’re home in Leelanau County?

When you walk down to the public access on Big Glen Lake, past Funistrada, I put a bench there. It has a plaque that reads, “Remembering Max. Enjoy Glen Lake”