Talk to Your Children About Every Little Thing, Especially Your Unconditional Love

I'm not sure at what age Ethan and his best friends discovered getting high off cough medicine, or who presented them with the idea. I don't know if it came from the internet or another friend, and it doesn't really matter.

If Ethan had died from long term abuse of alcohol, heroin use, cocaine, crack or meth, I think people would understand better that some system had failed. Kids are taught well in school DARE classes about the dangers of these drugs. Parents through the media and society in general have absorbed the knowledge that these substances are dangerous. Laws exist to make it harder and deter some kids who still feel the need to meet society's standards. There are numerous facilities to treat the addiction. I would feel like there wasn't a lot I could add to that conversation.

But that wasn't the case, so for parents and teens, even middle schoolers, here are some things you should know.

A drug that is legal can still be lethal. Cost, accessibility, and even the lack of a prescription doesn't make it safe. Although we're getting a little more educated about prescription drug abuse and its effects, even that isn't enough. Over the counter cough medicine can be just as dangerous although there are fewer studies, practically no laws, and in general neither children nor parents are aware of the risks. Children, teens and even adults feel like if they can buy it in a store, it's safer than using an illegal narcotic. They are horribly wrong.

According to a 2008 study (yes, the only thing I could find was that out of date), one in 10 teens has used OTC cough medicine to get high. And while we might assume, as the police officer who caught Ethan shoplifting at 16 did, that they are after the alcohol content in liquid medications, we would be wrong. We would also be wrong to believe, as that article did, that it is something they'll move past to illegal drugs as they get older and decide it is beneath them. If they become addicted, they don't move on. There is no need. It is still cheap, legal and deceptively safe.

The active ingredient in hundreds of cough suppressants, including the ones in my cabinet and probably yours, is dextromethorphan. It's a central nervous system depressant that, taken according to directions, is safe. Taken at levels from double to dozens of times the recommended dosage it can mimic everything from being drunk to PCPs. If your child is found in possession of it, no one is likely to think a lot of it. If you go to take cough medicine and discover it's all gone, you probably think you forgot and used it. If they wander through a pharmacy, or even the health care department of a grocery store, discount store, or dollar store, they can easily fill their pockets with boxes of the stuff, since it's not even behind the counter.

Even if you talk to your child regularly about the dangers of drugs, odds are good you won't think about cough medicine. After all, you give it to them sometimes. How do you make them understand that the hazards from abuse are just as real as with any street drug? Somehow you have to include medications from prescription pills to cough medicine in the conversation, because if you don't, someone else will.

That's the cautionary tale to parents.

But yesterday I just kept thinking about the kids. What do you say? How do you talk about a drug you hope they know nothing about in an effort to warn them without giving them ideas.

Be honest. Studies have shown that sex education classes that teach only abstinence don't work because they don't teach about what is really going on. I think that drug abuse classes sometimes have the same problem. Just say no is a wonderful idea, but it doesn't look at anything beyond the small gesture of denial.

It doesn't look at the peer pressure, or the desire to fit in. It doesn't look at the fact that sex feels good and it's easy to go further than you meant to if you don't know anything about the steps leading up to the big "it" you're not supposed to do. It doesn't look at the reality that sometimes you don't want to feel like a kid who doesn't fit in and a cough medicine that you and your buddies can grab off a shelf makes you suddenly cool and relaxed and all the crap you deal with every day doesn't matter quite so much.

As a parent, it's damn near impossible to convince a child that the pain of the ninth grade or the attention of a certain boy, is just such a little part of life that it really won't mean anything in a few years. It's hard for them to believe that the circles of life beyond high school will take them so far beyond both the friendships and rebuttals of their peers. It's hard for them to conceive of a time when it won't matter that they weren't popular, or that someone did or did not like them... a time when the people who are their world won't even be a small part of it.

I know because I tried so hard with Ethan. I didn't know the dangers of dextromethorphan. I didn't know the extent of his pain. But I did know the danger of peer pressure and how keenly he wanted to fit in, when what he really needed to do was carve his own path. I don't know how to tell anyone to fix that, but I know I have to tell you to try.

My son used with his two best friends, and to the best of my knowledge, all their girlfriends as well. One boy came across as trouble from the get-go, while the other was from an apparently stable, two-parent family, (just to show you that trying to pick their friends may not help). I don't know who the ring leader was and it could have been Ethan for all I know. In any case, they used together and supported one another in the path they chose. I don't know about the "trouble" child, but I know from talking with the other young man that he was addicted just like Ethan. I know he's clean now, but that getting clean cost him a lifelong friendship and left him with a load of guilt; that he's still troubled by a drug he left behind and that he'll never be the same person that he was before he used it.

I know that despite my efforts to talk to my son, I let things slide because I accepted that he'd become more secretive, less willing to share, moodier, as he became a teen and matured, and because other than the drug use, he shared so much of his life that I think now he was probably often covering what he wasn't telling me by oversharing in other areas. That quite possibly from the first use some part of his brain knew that was something to hide. I knew about alcohol, pot and sex, and sometimes about shoplifting, and we dealt with those things. But I didn't know about cough medicine -- something seemingly so innocent -- partly because I wasn't educated to the problem. I know I didn't force him to be part of family meals and outings sometimes because his moodiness and sulking would ruin a whole day, and I wish now that I'd drug him along because maybe that was what he really wanted and at least now that wouldn't be something for me to feel guilty about.

So I'm urging you to educate yourself about things you don't really want to know about, not just the easy stuff. Talk to your children, whatever their age, in an age appropriate way, about all the hazards and the joys life holds for them. Help them understand that sometimes there are trade offs, that not doing the thing that seems good at the time will make something better a part of their future. Make it easy for them to talk to you without judging the little things, so maybe they'll be honest about the big things. Know about things that can hurt them so you can warn them and watch for danger. If something seems wrong, take them to a doctor or a counselor and the sooner the better. Track down the problem if you can, even if it makes them mad and you feel like you're beating your head against a wall. Make them be a part of your life so you can be part of theirs.

Know that all of that may not be enough, but that as important as it is to save your child, if you cannot do it, it may be just as important to know that you did everything you could.

And whatever happens, love them. Make them know you love them even when you say no, even when you have to let them suffer the consequences of their choices, even if they hang up on you half the time or wind up being lost in some place that you can't reach or save them.

Tell them you love them without reservation, even when they are an ass and when no one else does. Make them hear you above the noise of life and peers and pressures. Because right now, that's all I have to cling to.

A memory of a hug and knowing that whatever demons rode him, Ethan knew he was loved.

Angry at Life, Angry at Death, Angry at Myself, Too

Forty odd years ago, a look at the grieving process identified five stages of grief, beginning with denial and isolation, followed by anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance -- a generally accepted pathway for grief that of course, isn't a rulebook.

Yet I find that when I looked up the steps, they have indeed been the ones I've begun to stumble through, although I think bargaining will be more of a series of "what ifs," or perhaps a battle with the guilt I feel looming, as there is no negotiation with death.

A week ago, when I got the call, I sat alone and cried. I had stayed home sick from church after inheriting some upper sinus crap from the children, and when my husband called after service, I told him the news and sent him on to the the grocery store. I didn't want anyone to cry on. I didn't want to be comforted. I didn't want it to be made more real by existing in some space other than my telephone and the virtual world of my computer. I sat and spilled out my pain in the blog I sent out the next morning -- the blog I've shared repeatedly and begged people to share because it hurt, and I wanted it to mean something by helping someone.

For the last week I've done a fairly good job of hanging on to anger, but I know that will wear thin after a while.

It's easier to be angry at the young man who destroyed his life over and over again than it is to deal with all the other losses contained inside his death. Just like blowing up because his lousy father didn't even come to his funeral, I know I probably have to let this anger out to move on and really grieve.

So yes, I'm pissed at Ethan. I'm pissed at him for using drugs, for not calling except when he wanted something or was so messed up that he didn't make sense, for never seeming to care about anyone but himself.

I'm pissed at him for not going to the doctor because maybe, just maybe, there was something else going on that could have been treated.

I'm pissed at him for dying. At Christmas.

That's a lot of anger and it's not all purely true, but this last week it's been easier to hang onto those bits of anger because anger makes you stronger sometimes. When you're angry, you do things you wouldn't normally do. Like laugh at a funeral. Like let myself live because the depths of that the grief that consumes me might just drown me if I didn't have anger to hang onto right now.

But the facts about what I'm angry about will help me breathe a little easier, too.

I'm angry that Ethan decided, when just a little kid in middle school or maybe just as he was starting high school, that getting high might be cool. But I know that there was a time that he was very unhappy with the heavy boy who wore glasses and braces and that he couldn't see past that temporary reality to the man he would become. I know that his friends were doing it, and that he craved their approval more than I ever understood. I know that the DARE program that had warned Ethan about the dangers of alcohol and illegal drugs, hadn't caught up with the abuse of prescriptions and darn sure never touched on the dangers of dextromethorphan, which was so easy to get and deceptively safe.

I know that despite being so much alike in appearance and personality, Ethan wasn't a carbon copy of me. That loner streak that saw me through my middle and high school days didn't run through him. Unlike my first dog, the dog he loved wasn't the constant companion that got him out of the house and helped him find happiness in a world that didn't rely on friends (no fault of the dog's, mind you). He didn't develop the desire he had to create and do and accomplish things. I didn't have the addictive genetic makeup he apparently inherited.

I know it was an innocent choice at first, and that he was lonely and angry and confused and terribly young, and by the time he started sorting himself out of those feelings, he was addicted and it was really hard to fight. Addiction doesn't go away just because you aren't taking your drug of choice, it hangs around and whispers about the good times you had. It changes the way your mind works. It comes up in conversation with your friends to remind you how you miss it. When something goes wrong, it's there waiting to welcome you back. It takes over your brain so that other things that people think will bring you pleasure just aren't that great. It deceives you, like the Devil, promising only wonderful things while it wrecks your life and you cannot even see it happening.

Despite our efforts to help him negotiate being clean and learn to function without his old friend, Ethan just couldn't. I know he did his best, and while I'm angry, it's beginning to be the at the drug and its availability, not at the boy/man who couldn't escape it.

And no, he really didn't just call when he needed something. Sometimes I know he called just to hear my voice and that he missed me as badly as I missed him. But our connection was damaged and neither of us could fix it or say the right words. The love that pulled us so close meant we hurt each other, that I was the one he lashed out at in his pain. It was probably easier to ask for money than to ask for some less tangible thing he couldn't identify. It was probably easier to lean on the friend he could find at the Dollar store than confront the tangled emotions we had toward each other. And of course, we both thought we had time, a lot of it.

I know that he cared. Sometimes he would tell me I worked too hard. Sometimes he would admit he was glad I had a husband that took care of me. Sometimes his conversation was mostly about how things were here because he didn't have a life he could share, and sometimes a rambling, adolescent tale about what he wanted to do with his life. He still dreamed of doing things, but like a kid, not a young man, because the drug had stunted his emotional and mental growth. And how many kids actually remember a parent's birthday? But just this year, when he'd been clean for ages, he skipped a Mother's Day get together when I was so looking forward to seeing him. The little cards and gifts that other moms can count on never came from him. He was a tornado, taking everything in his path and needing more and that hurt and still hurts. Those moments of compassion were so consumed by his needs, by the fact that the drugs made him focus on himself because nothing else could bring him pleasure.

I wonder why we could not persuade him to see a doctor when he was in so much pain the last couple of weeks -- not just the emotional and mental pain that I think he dealt with almost constantly (and which he also refused to accept help for), but the physical pain. He'd never resisted seeing a doctor before when he felt bad. Had he done something he didn't want to deal with in a doctor's office? Was he afraid he knew what was wrong?

I'm angry that he died, not at him. I'm angry that whatever demons drove him were too much. That God decided he'd had his share of pain (how selfish is that?) and let him finally escape. I'm angry at God, and He knows it.

I'm angry at the people who went with him down the path of addiction, not so much the kids that he stumbled into it with, but the men who were still involved in it with him and eager to help him return whenever he got clean. I'm angry at everyone that failed him in any way, because it's almost impossible to accept that something could not have changed him.

To be honest, I'm angry at me. I'm angry that I couldn't force him to be different, better, happy, clean. That I couldn't find the words that would make him change. I'm angry because there is a part of me that no matter how many times I tell myself I did the absolute best that I knew how, that I prayed and wept and talked and gave and gave and tried to practice tough love too, feels like I failed.

I'm angry at me because no matter how much I love him, I couldn't save him.

'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.

'Don't Cry For Me Down Here'

Yeah, when I get where I'm going
There'll be only happy tears
I will shed the sins and struggles
I have carried all these years

And I'll leave my heart wide open
I will love and have no fear
Yeah, when I get where I'm going
Don't cry for me down here

Melvern Rivers Ii Rutherford

Getting ready to go bury my child yesterday, this song as sang by Brad Paisley began playing in my head. Not word for word, but the chorus. Funny how my country roots have been showing this week.

I fumbled for the right things to wear -- somehow I'd never purchased a wardrobe for burying my son -- finally settling on black pants and a dark shirt, the black leather coat I bought the winter I was expecting Ethan and couldn't button when I was pregnant.

We were running late driving the 30-minute route from our house to Galax. Of course, I was riding shotgun, and the roads were more familiar to me so I might have made better time, but I was reasonably sure they wouldn't start the procession without me. His sister and her family were caught in traffic on the interstate, so I was glad we went the old roads. An accident clogged northbound traffic all day, but she was at the cemetery about the same time we were.

Traveling through Galax, I put my head down to pray for the strength to make it through yet another tough day. I had no more uttered the prayer than my mind was filled with a vision. It was Ethan, stretched out in the floor, but there was a figure of light above him and it reached down toward him and pulled him free of his earthly shackles. He rose up with a light of his own, and his face was split by the biggest smile I've seen in many years. I knew that he'd shaken off the addiction, the pain, the suffering that only he could understand and that he was free. God had sent me what I needed to know and the strength to get through the day. I could miss him, but I couldn't want him back in those bonds.

His best friend and that young man's mom, who had like Ethan and I battled the same addiction, were the first people I went to at the funeral home. They were Ethan's second family, just as in many ways my house was his second home, for years. He has a family, escaped the addiction, had to make the difficult decision to not spend time with my son, and I just wanted him to know that he did what he had to do to survive. I wanted him to know that some of the love I can no longer give Ethan will be his as he goes forward.

I cried with his mother, who had known both the little boy and the angry young man and, like me, loved them both. I am sure there was a part of her that shuddered at how close she came to being where I was at, a part that mourned and was also thankful that she wasn't bearing the full brunt of it. Had the roles been reversed, I would have felt that way as well.

The drive to the cemetery was peaceful and the weather was warmer than expected. The leather coat went in the back seat by the time we reached the rural cemetery where Ethan was going to join generations of his ancestors, my grandparents, and a whole sea of people I didn't ever know. My parents plan to be buried there. The view is rolling hills, trees and fields of cattle. The sun was shining bright as we gathered around the grave.

I expected a small, sad gathering of family members who could get away from work, maybe a few folks from the Hope House where he lived a while (they agreed to be pall bearers) and some people from his church. I was totally overwhelmed by the number of people who were there. It was rush of activity to get us seated and everything ready for the service.

My chair almost toppled down hill when I sat. My first thought was how funny it would be to just fall over and topple the whole family like dominoes down the hill -- how Ethan would love it.

The pastor from the church where Ethan had found the only job he liked, but where he still couldn't manage to stay on track, knew the young man that he spoke about. He said that he knew we were all asking if we could have done things differently, and the answer was yes, because we are all fallible. That nothing could separate Ethan from his God, including the demons who drove him. We shared a few stories and a prayer and the Vince Gill song "Go Rest High On That Mountain" was played. We gathered in a gusting wind and released 23 bright colored balloons into the heavens.

After that, I had a chance to see who had come. I was even more blown away than I had been at the sheer number. There were people from Virginia who knew and cared about him, many of whom I never got to meet. People from North Carolina who knew and cared about us. People who came just for me and brought love and support and an outpouring of grace that I never expected from the time we've spent together. Family that I hadn't seen in years and years. The love poured out on me at the side of my son's grave wrapped round me like a warm blanket and helped carry me through the afternoon.

While the gravediggers finished their work, several of us gathered in the old wooden church and sipped coffee. E1 and E2, who had hardly got the chance to know their uncle, ran the aisles and played, freed from the need to keep their good clothes nice for the ceremony they did not understand. E3 cruised the pews and complained about the disruption in her eating schedule.

Before we left, my husband and I walked back to the grave topped with holiday flowers. We knelt and prayed individually, then stood and prayed together. I thanked God for giving me Ethan and for the blessing that was his life and the lessons I learned from him. I wished I could have kept him longer. I questioned why his life had to follow the course it did. I asked if there was any way to let him know how much he was loved and missed.

Of course, there was food and conversation at my mom's house following the ceremony, more noise from boisterous little girls, a drive home in the cooling afternoon to resume the routines of life, late night texts from a sister who is now an only child and beginning to feel that loss more keenly.

This was the day I buried my son, still with no answers as to how he died, but I think, thanks to a gift from God, some understanding of why. The time was not right for me, or for his sister, or for the many people who cared about him, prayed for him, and held onto a hope that one day he'd be all they knew he could be. The time was right for Ethan, walking with God, to be free of the pain of this life and get on with what comes next.

From a day that I expected only sadness, I found the closure I did not think I'd find. I found a peace that may make it easier to deal with the sadness. I found the strength everyone had said I had, but I found it did not come from within, but from without from those same friends who gathered around me and from the God who made the decision I still wish He had not made.

No More Goodbyes

I know your life on earth was troubled
And only you could know the pain.
You weren't afraid to face the devil.
You were no stranger to the rain.
Go rest high on that mountain.
Son, your work on earth is done.
Go to heaven a shoutin',
Love for the Father and the Son.
Vince Gill

This week I wrote my son's obituary.

It wasn't a task I ever contemplated doing, but when it came down to needing to be done, I didn't want to hand off the memories and words to someone else.

I spent 25 years in journalism and during that time I penned a lot of obituaries. I learned how to word everything from the sudden death of an infant survived by generations of family to the passing of a well known local citizen, remembered as much for the things he had done as for those he left behind. I used the form sent in by the funeral home, or I helped the family figure out what they wanted to say. During the latter part of my career I worked with a wonderful gentleman who specialized in obituaries and had written his own and put it on file at the funeral home. When he died suddenly of a heart attack, all that remained to be done was to fill in a few blanks.

But there are no words to sum up the life of a young man who had so much potential and love and who brought so much joy when he could allow himself to live life. There were no words to explain how it went wrong and ended too soon, how I feel as though I've lost a part of my body, maybe a leg, because I feel as though I'm pulling myself through the days, not walking and running, but dragging along. I couldn't let it go at born on, died on though. The best I could come up with was "He loved video games, skateboarding, his family and friends, and computers." None of that was enough to bring him happiness in this life.

Faced with the questions of what to do in planning my son's funeral, that song by Vince Gill came into my mind. When I looked up the lyrics and remembered why he wrote it, I knew why. I was a country music fan in those days and a huge fan of Keith Whitley, the first person I remember dying from an addiction he could not control. The song was begun after his death from alcohol poisoning as a tribute to him.

Now, a few decades later, it will also be played as a tribute to Ethan whose pain no one else ever knew, whose trouble we could never understand.

The funeral will be today, but I won't be able to touch Ethan's hand one more time and tell him goodbye. It's as unreal as if he had gone to war and they had shipped his body home, assuring me that the man inside the casket was indeed my son who had been absent from my life for months, but who I just spoke to a week ago -- probably only hours before he died.

The fact that he had isolated himself so much in his addiction meant none of his neighbors noticed they had not seen him. It meant family wasn't really surprised when he wouldn't answer the phone or didn't call. Often lost in his alternate reality, he didn't feel the need to respond to a ringing phone or a knock at the door. He never bothered to set up his voice mail account.

It was a note left on his apartment door, still there five days later, that led his grandmother to call police and gain entry to his apartment. He had probably been dead that entire time.

While he always insisted that it was his choice and didn't hurt anyone else, this is the reality of his addiction. I'm facing a closed casket and while an image of my dead son wasn't one I was eager to see, being deprived that last chance at goodbye breaks my heart over and over. No, he isn't there anyway, but the earthly vessel that I bore, the body that carried his troubled soul for 23 years remains and I long to see him one more time and to whisper my love, even to he empty shell where he was.

This is a harsh reality of addiction that no one knows or speaks of. Addicts often die while not under a doctor's care and without an illness that a medical examiner can quickly sign off on. That means an autopsy, which I know he would never have wanted and which, thanks to CSI and too many realistic crime shows, breaks my heart at a whole different level. Isolated in addiction, they may also die alone and despite caring family and friends, that self imposed isolation means that no one knows immediately that something is wrong. They may be dead for days before they are found and compounded with an autopsy, there is not enough of the person they were for family and friends to say goodbye.

That is just part of the price of his addiction that we will continue to pay. I know the picture that I have of him in my mind, the beautiful blue eyes and smile, the big hands and warm hug when he enveloped me in his arms, are a much more precious memory than I would gain from touching his dead body. But there is a part of me that so badly needed to do that, to touch him, to kiss him one last time, to know that this is real and not a bad dream.

It's so damn unfair that beyond all the pain of his death I can find yet another level of pain just because I cannot say goodbye. And yet, somehow I must. Whether I cry to the heavens or weep by his grave, today is goodbye to the earthly part of my son.

And with all the pain and heartache this goodbye brings, it also brings thanksgiving for the child I knew and the lives he touched, the love and blessings he gave as my son before his demons defeated him. It also holds faith in the peace he has finally found and in a future reunion when there will be no more goodbyes.

http://www.twincountyfunerals.com/obituaries/Ethan-Funk/#!/Obituary