I've Already Been Grieving A Long Time

When my son, Ethan, was found dead in his apartment two weeks ago he had been dead for several days.

Even though Dec. 15, 2013, may wind up being the date on his tombstone, what really died that day was hope. What died that day were the hard to kill dreams that someday, somehow my beautiful, talented boy would find a purpose in life that no one else could give him and quit killing himself a little bit at a time. What died that day were my still harbored hopes that he'd get clean and become the man he always dreamed of being.

Although there is no indication his death was suicide, Ethan had been killing himself for a long time and, little by little, the people that loved him had been forced to let him go. All we had left were our hopes, our dreams, our prayers, and when he was clean and in the mood to be sociable, little glimpses of the Ethan we so wanted all the time.

Addiction may end in death, but it is in reality a lot of little deaths. The death of personality, stability, contact, interaction, early dreams, relationships, health and so much more.

I've been saying goodbye to Ethan for so long, that I thought this last goodbye would be only a little more difficult than many of the others. I was wrong, the finality makes it far worse, but the fact remains that while it's another level of grief, I've been grieving a long time.

Ethan was a wonderful, caring child who never wanted to hurt anyone. He turned into an angry teenager who demanded my attention on his schedule, my support for his demands. He was verbally and emotionally abusive when it was just the two of us at home. He punctured his walls and doors with knives and fists, and had no regrets for breaking things that weren't his. Although he couldn't support himself or make all of his own decisions, he refused to comply with any standards outside of his own. Household chores (taking out trash and emptying the dishwasher) weren't done. He overloaded the dryer until he burned it out and I started doing his laundry. A HAZMAT suit would have been needed to enter his room. Still, sometimes we connected although I couldn't get him to see life from a different point of view; one where he needed to be responsible and think about a driver's license and job, where he needed to think about school as a step toward his dreams, one where he would always need to follow someone's rules to get ahead.

When he turned 16, he decided that since he was legally an adult in North Carolina, that meant he no longer had to do anything I wanted. He was, by God, grown. The drug use, which I think had probably only been spotty until then, undoubtedly increased. That was the year I feel like I began to lose my son. The young man I interacted with at times bore only a passing resemblance to the boy I had raised.

I've been grieving him for seven years now.

People who have never dealt with addiction cannot understand that special kind of pain. It comes from forcing yourself to let go, to realize that there is nothing within your power that can be done to change them. It comes from accepting that they must make the change if it is to be made.

You force yourself to stop running to their rescue, to stop giving them money (although I was always willing to buy food), to stop trying to tell them what's wrong because all it does is make for an angry conversation without changing them. You may stop mentioning their addiction, they'll lie or defend it and it's just another barrier that keeps away those few stolen moments of happiness.

You quit expecting them to behave like a non-addict. They often don't show up for family gatherings, they don't see the need to work, they don't bathe or do laundry. They don't answer the phone. They don't have regular contact with anyone. Their health deteriorates.

And each time you realize they won't do that little thing, you grieve. You grieve for the person that they were once upon a time, the person that they sometimes become again in your mind.

In the last two weeks, I know I've grieved as much for the Ethan who should have been as for losing my son. If you've not dealt with addiction, you cannot understand. I'm not grieving some perfect son, but the boy who slipped slowly away from us a little bit at a time. I realize sometimes when I beat myself up over something that I didn't do, that it was probably only the Ethan that has been largely gone for seven years that would have wanted to do that any way. That even in the moments between planning it and accomplishing it, he might have become someone who wasn't interested.

I've grieved over not taking more advantage of the sober times, not making more effort to pull him back into the family after he had forced or scared us away. I've grieved over not making the time to share his successes. I've grieved over hopes and dreams and all the "what ifs" that I can dredge up sometimes.

And then I remember him high in a fit of anger, when my normally docile lab suddenly stepped between us hackles raised and a threatening tone to his bark. I remember garbled conversations, the fact that he couldn't be counted on even with an advance invitation and a car at his door, the fact that I never told him he could not come to my home if he was straight, the fact that there were months at a time when he had a license and a car, but didn't choose to spend time with me.

And I grieve again for what we lost in bits and pieces to the drug that finally pulled him under one last time.

'I Just Don't Know What to Say'

Ten years ago, a friend of mine lost her daughter in a car accident. I knew she had to be in such incomprehensible pain, and I didn't know what to say.

We didn't have the fairly safe option of sending a post on Facebook, or a text message. I knew that to offer any sympathy, I would have to confront that raw pain. I would have to pick up the phone and let myself dip my toes in a dark lake where I didn't want to go, a dark lake where it would be too easy to drown.

So, for a long time, I didn't talk to her. Our jobs had changed and we weren't in as much contact anyway. Then came the day when I saw her across a drug store parking lot. I still remember thinking she hadn't seen me and I could just go in because she was almost to her car. Instead I called her name and walked across the lot to talk to her.

I still didn't know what to say, but it didn't matter. She didn't need to hear my words, she needed to feel my support and caring. She needed to talk about her daughter, her family, their process and pain, and for a long time I stood and held her and listened and cried.

This week she came to my house and held me and listened to my rambling voice and ignored the uncombed hair, wrinkled clothing and unmade face and the chaos of three small children and three small dogs beneath our feet. Before she left I apologized for not coming to her sooner.

In the last few days, I've received support from strangers who somehow found this blog and sent me comments or Facebook messages. I've been overwhelmed by the calls and texts and visits. I've been lifted up by the people in my life, some of whom I don't really even know beyond casually, who have gone the extra mile (sometimes literally) to let me know they care. But like my friend, who may have noticed that I didn't call, there have been people I know and care about who have been absent.

While I have wanted them to call or reach out in some way, I understand their absence, because at one time I did the same. Although we're fairly comfortable talking to someone who has lost a parent -- after all, that's the "natural" order of things -- and we come closer to being able to deal with the loss of a spouse or sibling, the loss of a child is something that we don't want to think about.

I understand that you don't want to get near a parent's grief because you think you can imagine how bad it is and you just don't know what to say or do. For a parent, the loss of a child is the worse thing you can imagine, and I can tell you it is worse that you can imagine. You don't want that pain to touch you, even from someone else. You don't want to imagine being pulled into that dark lake and knowing that your child, that baby that you held when they were born, that you helped learn to walk, ride a bike, and all the millions of things along the way to whatever point they have reached, is gone.

I understand, because that knowledge will knock the breath from your chest, set your heart racing and send you reeling through your days, looking for bits of a normal life to hang on to.

But from this side of the invisible wall that separates parents with living children from parents who have lost a child, I can tell you that reaching out is what we need.

Except for those few special people who I know who have already walked this path for different reasons, you won't know what to say. And here's a secret, even if you've lost a child, you still don't have any words that will take away the grief from another parents' heart, all you have then is the knowledge that it is something you can survive.

However people have reached out to me, they have said, "I don't know what to say." And do you know, I don't expect them to? I don't expect my pastor to have some magical answer from God or some scripture that will give me understanding. I don't expect my best friend to be able to make me smile. I don't expect the people that I've worked or played alongside to have the words to help fill this hole in my heart. I don't expect other parents who have lost children to be able to do more than offer me hope.

All a grieving parent needs is a hug, a shoulder to cry on and an ear that isn't already tired of hearing the same broken story that we come to feel we've repeated a million times. We need to cry. We need to touch life. We may find a hug that reminds us of the one that is gone and if we do, I'm sorry, but we may ask you for a hug a hundred times before the pain in our hearts eases one iota. We need to talk about our child because we know that child is dead, but we need to know that others remember that he lived. If you were the child's friend, share your memories and pictures. If you never knew them, let the parent give a memory. Just be there.

This week, my words have been about the struggle to save him from himself. Sometimes they have been about my guilt, because whatever happens to a child, a parent will feel some responsibility. With some people they have been about my hope that this can somehow be part of helping someone else and making a difference. There will be a time when I want to talk about how wonderful he was before he changed, when I let myself take down the photo albums and cry over the baby, the little boy, and the adolescent that I lost inside the broken young man who died. There will be a time when I slowly begin to take out my dreams for him and weep over them because they will never come true.

Everyone who has reached out to me, be they fellow travelers in this land of grief, friends, or strangers, has helped me keep going. They've helped me hold myself together because they have said they care, because they've sent up prayers, because they've been willing to listen in one way or another to what I needed to say, because they've let my son into their lives and grieved along with me.

No, there is nothing anyone can say that makes it better. As my friends who know have said, it's not something you get over, it's something you get through and live with. This will be my reality for the rest of my time on earth. Maybe there will be days when I don't think about it, and I'm sure in time it won't consume me, but it always will be a part of me.

So what can you do when there's nothing you can do?

Don't flee from the pain of a grieving parent because you don't know what to say. Don't avoid talking about the child you knew or mentioning the loss. Don't worry about doing the wrong thing. Don't feel helpless in the face of our pain.

Open your ears, your arms and your heart and be honest. Go ahead and say, "I don't know what to say." It's OK. No one does. We'll do the talking for you.