Category Archives: Family

My parents called last Sunday.

Dad: “We want to take you and Frank on a river cruise through France.”

Me: …silence.

Mom: “Why aren’t you jumping up and down?”

Me, after a moment’s hesitation: “It’s that plane thing. I’ll let you know by the end of the day.”

WTF, you ask? Why did I not give an immediate YES to a river cruise through France? I hate to fly. I don’t just hate it, it’s the one thing that can blow my cool. It’s not flying. I’m not afraid of being in the air or anything. It’s being squished, belted into fourteen inches of chair-space with no place to put my legs for eight hours. Eight hours packed in like sardines. And being an overseas flight–in the dark. It’s enough to get me hyperventilating just thinking about it.

My amazing stepson gave me a standing offer a while back–if I ever wanted to fly, he’d get me an upgrade to business class. I called him. It’s all set. My own bed! My own cubby! Restaurant quality meal, including an ice-cream sundae if I want it, movies. This, I can do. I called my parents and told them we’re in.

Huzzah?

Why wasn’t I feeling it? I’ve never been to France or flown first class. A river cruise through the country, then a few days on the Riviera, in Cannes? Two weeks in Europe? Of course I’m excited. Something kept niggling at me, and it manifested in a single thought and instant shame–We never could have done this before Chris died.

Ker-pow. Right to the gut. Like the fear of finding him dead no longer hangs over me, so too has the fear of traveling too distantly lifted. And that makes me feel terrible in ways I can’t describe.

There was a brief time when I thought he was ok–really ok. I wrote about it here on this blog only a few months prior to his death. I believed he was going to finally start living the life he worked so hard to have. I believed we would no longer live anticipating the next catastrophe. Through earlier years, we’d learned not to travel too far. Frank and I had to drive home through the night more than once because he was in crisis. It hadn’t happened in a long while, but until he moved out and seemed to be on his way in his own life, we were prepared for that mad dash if ever we did go away.

Friends tease us for always going to the same restaurant in town every weekend. Well, first of all, we love it. If I’m going out to eat, the food has to be better than I can make it. They treat us like family there. But that’s not the only reason we went there most Saturdays since it first opened. It’s close. Chris spent too many lonely weekends home alone. We had to walk that line between being with him and keeping our date nights–for us, yes, but also so he didn’t have the guilt of ruining our evenings alongside the loneliness. I’m not sure we succeeded in that, because while we did go out, the cell phone sat on the table with us, just in case. I always found a reason to text him. Did he want us to bring food home for him? How about dessert? And instead of going to the movies afterwards, which is what we’d always done before, we’d come home and watch a movie with him.

My life, our lives, revolved around Chris. There were things we didn’t do because we didn’t want to leave him. That was a rock and a hard place, because leaving him left him vulnerable and lonelier than ever, but sticking close made him feel bad. There was no right choice, so we made the one we could live with. During the ten months prior to his death, Frank and I learned to let go of that fear. He was fine. Happy. Social. He enjoyed the freedom of being home alone. Then he moved out and “empty nest” became a thing of beauty I truly loved.

Empty nest has a totally different meaning for me now. I can’t love it any more. It implies things I can’t even think about, and hurts too deep down in my soul. But I do have to find a way to let go of the life that existed before Chris died. All of it. It’s gone. I have to learn to live without his smile, his hugs, hearing him sing his heart out. And I have to find it in me to embrace the peace that comes of knowing not only is he free of all that mental and physical pain, so am I.

In a recent email conversation, author and friend Stephen Graham King sent me this quote he once found on a chalkboard years ago, and remembered:

“The most helpful discovery of today has been that right in the midst of my sorrows, there is always room for joy. Joy and sorrow are sisters, they live in the same house.” Macrina Wiederkehr (The Song of the Seed, A Monastic Way of Tending the Soul)

Simple and true. A lesson that took all I am to learn, after Brian died. There was joy–my son, Scott, was born a month later. Jamie went from adorable toddler to precocious little girl. Scottie did all those infant firsts. I don’t remember much of it. I lived in a black hole for the first full year after my husband’s death. Climbing out of it was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I learned the lesson well. I came to understand about those sisters, Sorrow and Joy.

Tangling with the immense sorrow in my life right now are so many joys that I refuse to allow sorrow to dim. GrandWilliam turned four. We bought him a “Merida” bow and arrow set that he’s over the moon in love with. Watching him master it, then reenact scenes from the movie was epic. Gioia’s smile is sunshine beyond reckoning. My kids don’t like when I talk about them online, so I’ll just say the simple fact they exist is my greatest joy.

I have Frankie D, my love. Date nights or grocery shopping, there’s no one I’d rather spend time with.

I have both of my wonderful parents, a younger brother who dove 20 feet to the bottom of the Mediterranean to get me sand, a younger sister who sends me daily pictures of her dogs just to make me smile, and an older brother who is and has always been my best friend.

I have friends. Beautiful, wonderful, caring friends who truly love me.

And writing. My creative mind might only be able to focus on my own stuff right now, but it is able to focus–a joy in itself that keeps me from spiraling, from wallowing. I have a novel coming out in October with a publisher I am truly honored and thrilled to be writing for. Two  more are slated for April and October of 2016. The everyday joys that go along with edits and galleys and final proofs and covers and all the things a writer dreams of continue. I feel them. They make me happy. Life in general does. That isn’t canceling out the sorrow of Christofer’s death, but it keeps me from falling back into that black hole I will never fall into again.

And even he brings me joy, crazy as that sounds. We were close, my boy and I. Closer than most mothers and sons. I got that for twenty-five years. Some hard years, some great years, but I had them. Remembering makes me cry now, but I know from experience that it won’t always be that way.

What are your joys? Share them here or elsewhere, but share them. Joy is contagious. It seeps out into the world and makes a difference to someone, like my friend’s did yesterday, in the quote in his email.

Peace.

Junkie. What does that word conjure? Need I say more? Probably not, but I will.

How dehumanizing a term, just like all the others we use to put people we don’t understand, people who make us uncomfortable, in their place. Maybe such words don’t start out that way, but it’s what they become. We get this instant image, and the cringe that goes along with it. Or the apathy. Or the disdain. Usually the disdain. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard/read something like, “He knew what he was doing when he put that needle in his arm.”

Yes. He did. He knew the horror. He knew the risk. And he did it anyway. Doesn’t that say a whole world of things that get dismissed shortly after the above is stated?

A friend recently sent me an article, and a link to a rally happening in DC this October, organized by Face Addiction. The video is compelling. After it came another video done by Chris Herren, former NBA basketball player and now a speaker for addiction recovery. I don’t agree with everything Mr. Herren advocates, but one thing he said really hit me. When he speaks to school groups, he looks out over the crowd of teens and asks, “What is it about you that you feel the need to change every Friday and Saturday night?”

This, this is the part that even within the community working so hard to combat this thing killing our loved ones gets overlooked. It is the most basic, fundamental answer necessary to change. What lies behind the choice to use drugs? Answer that, you’re on your way. Address it, you’re further. Conquer it, you’ve won.

Is love energy?

All the people I’ve loved in my life? I still love them. Boys who broke my heart. Boys whose hearts I broke. Friends I haven’t seen since I was a kid. No matter how a relationship ends, the love doesn’t go away. If it did, there would be no such thing as a broken heart. It hurts because we love. Still and always. And when we see someone we haven’t in ages, that instant spark is the love surging out of the little space it waited in, just as bright as it was way back when. Maybe it’s changed a little. We all grow up and become someone else. But it’s there, for me, absolutely

Energy. Water. Constants that can only change form, not be created or destroyed. Vast, but finite. But love? Is there a finite amount to go around? Is it like energy and water, existing at  constant rate? Maybe, once we’re gone along with all those who knew us, all the love we shared gets put back into the pool to be used by others. And if we, like everything else in the universe, recycle, maybe that love just gets carted along back with us, ready to be dipped into as needed.

I thought I’d write this post as a way of working out my thoughts to my own satisfaction, but this one is eluding me a whole week later. So I’m asking you your thoughts, if you have any on the matter.

I’m the whimsical, sparkle-queen of optimism. My kids grew up believing fairies lived in our gardens, in the woods behind our house. Dragons, bridge trolls, any manner of magical creature wasn’t just a story, but a fact of life. Yet we have never been a religious family. There was a time we tried, because that is what one did when raised a reluctant Catholic. If you ask my kids now, one will claim atheism, two will say they don’t know what they feel, one will claim she’s agnostic with a strong spiritual bend.

Chris was a very spiritual guy. He believed that this thing often called “God” is all around us, all the time. It’s nature. It’s science. It’s the earth and the sky and the stars. He believed there is a connection to all things, and the evidence is there for anyone who takes a moment to notice. All he believed was, in fact, science based, including whatever comes after this life is done.

We are energy. Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change form. That, in a nutshell, is his proof that we go on in some aspect. What that form is, he didn’t know. I don’t. No one does, not even those who claim to have the one truth of all things afterlife. There’s only one way to find out–to die, and to stay dead.

As I’ve written before, I’ve had some experiences that I can’t deny, even if I can’t explain them. Like the rings on my Cheshire Cat cell-phone case. I’d been crying all morning, not an unusual thing, but life goes on and dishes needed to be done. I took my rings off and put them down like this, on top of my cell phone, so I wouldn’t forget to put them back on:

recreated for obvious reasons

Turning back to get them a few minutes later, I found this:

Note, I was alone in the house. No cats in sight, and the cell phone and rings were directly behind me. I am 100% certain I didn’t put them down this way, because when I first put them on top of the cell phone, one of them slipped off and I put it back on top of the other. Let’s say one slid off and onto an eye. It would have had to have some momentum to send the other one to the other eye. That’s a whole lot of work and a lot of suspension of belief to accept. And yet, I know this happened. I didn’t slip through an alternate reality wherein I’d set my rings down that way to begin with. I didn’t black out, rearrange the rings so I could believe my son was, in his prankster way, telling me to stop crying. But was it him? Even though it’s way less of a stretch to believe so, I am skeptical.

Many other things have happened. Wow, so many. Things I can’t explain away as coincidence or wishful thinking. My son is working hard to let me know he’s not only ok, he wants me to be ok. And yet still, I’m skeptical. Me! The woman who still believes in fairies! So I told him, “Just have someone say [redacted]! If someone says [redacted], I’ll believe!”

And wouldn’t you know, the very next day, a friend emailed me and signed her name [redacted.] How much harder can he work at this? Why can’t I take the comfort I want so badly to take?

Chris didn’t have it so great. The last ten years of his life were full of so much mental and physical pain. He often felt lonely, even though he wasn’t alone. There were happy times too, but the last three weeks ending as they did keep the despair in the forefront. I want so much to believe that he’s free of all that shackled him in this life, having an afterlife better than what he had and not just ashes in the roots of a tree. So why do I keep making him prove it? Over and over again. My mind is so open to all things. I never say never. And yet…why not with this?

I have no answer. I don’t expect you to, either. Whether you’re devoutly faithful to a religion, spiritual, scientific, all have theories but no one knows. I am, however, interested in the experiences of others, if you wish to share.

Christofer’s memorial happened last weekend. I hadn’t realized the stress that put on me until Friday, when i just wanted to call it off. I, my whole family, have been grieving for nearly two months now, and it felt like opening the wound all over again. Not to be gross, but going with the wound analogy, it was more like draining an infection. Maybe it had scabbed over, but still ached something awful. It hurt, draining it. Bad. But when all was said and done, it was really, really for the best.

Some people I would never have thought would come, did. Some I expected to be there, weren’t. All in all, it was a packed house of people who love us, who love Chris. There was so much love and light in that sweltering train station, no one cared they were swimming in their own clothes. Whether or not you believe Chris was there with us, no one can deny how his presence gathered all that love now radiating out into the world. And that’s a positive pulled from this negative.

I didn’t write anything for the event. I started the show with the Rilke poem my friend brought to me the day after his death and then let everyone else speak. I’ve been writing and sharing here since the days following his death. Saturday was really for those who still needed an outlet. Family, friends, professors from WCSU, co-workers from Curaleaf. Some joked, most wept at some point. The beauty of their words touched everyone.

At one point, I saw a group of boys–young men–together, Chris’ friends from childhood, who hadn’t seen one another in years. They joked and laughed, hugged and wept. I could almost see Chris standing among them, smiling. And that was a positive pulled from this negative.

A young man called me a couple of weeks ago, asking about the memorial. He was once a world class martial artist who can now barely walk from room to room without assistance. He told me about the day Chris went to see him, bringing his bow, arrows and a target. His friend couldn’t lift the bow he’d once been master of, let alone pull the string. Chris put his friend’s hands on the bow, put his own hands over his friend’s, pulled the string for him, and let it fly. He did it over and over again, giving back to his friend something he’d forever lost. That is love. That is Chris. Hearing this story, one Chris never told me himself, was a positive pulled from this negative.

Sharing my pain has brought people into my life, people I would never have otherwise known. Some of you might be reading this now and thinking, “Does she mean me?” The answer is, “Yes, I do.” Friends of his, old and new, I’d never have met or reconnected with, who’ve shared with me pieces of my son I didn’t know about. Stories of his beauty I’d never have heard. People going through similar events who’ve connected with me. who I already cherish. Shared sorrow creates bonds as strong and as deep as shared joy. Others who simply sympathize, whether connected through a friend or family member, or randomly on the internet. Chris’ death has shown me people I’ve known and loved for years in an entirely new light. These are all positives taken from this negative, and I’m so grateful.

Taking a positive from any negative lessens the power of that negative. I’ve always believed this to my core. It’s not betraying love, it’s validating it. It’s not forgetting, it’s remembering in the most loving way possible. To say there is nothing positive about my son’s death is not only a lie, it’s harmful. Would I give back all these positives and more to have him back? Absolutely. But that’s not an option, so I’ll take every one of these positives, and all the others that come my way, and embrace them with all my heart.

Peace.

When you were born, you slept in a bassinet next to my bed. I slept with my hand on your tiny back, making sure you didn’t stop breathing in the night.

When you were little, in your own room, I’d get up in the night, unable to sleep until I made sure you, your sisters, your brother, were breathing. I really did. Right up until you were all teenagers, and we moved to the house on the river.

When you were older and battling heroin, I listened for your breathing. Through the kitchen floor. I knew what to listen for. The ragged gasps of your respiratory system struggling. I’d race upstairs and breathe for you, hold you through the night and make sure you kept breathing. In and out. Heartbeat bumping. In and out. Sometimes you’d stop breathing, for a moment longer than you should have. I’d shake you. You’d draw in. In the morning, you were so sorry.

When you were clean all those years, I sometimes still listened, standing in the kitchen, beneath the floorboards of your room. I’d stand there and cry to hear the silence, or a little snore. I stopped listening, and started sleeping. Then you moved out into a life of your own, and I thought my days of listening were done.

I didn’t listen when you came home again. Those heartbending years were so far in the past. This was just a bout of depression, nothing we hadn’t handled before. We were already on it. You were coasting, you said, until it lifted.

You went silent.

You slept a lot.

Coasting.

But you were screaming and screaming, weren’t you. I didn’t know how to listen to this new kind of silence. In the frenzied chaos of those first days battling all that went on in your head, I knew what to see, to hear, to look for. But this? Not this. My guard was down. You’d made it through! But I forgot to never say never.

You went upstairs to bed, to die whether you meant it or not. I don’t know if you struggled to breathe, or simply stopped. I wasn’t listening anymore.

Now I see all too clearly. My failure. Ultimate, and complete. Irreversible. Hindsight is ever the cruelest of things. It shows me daily all the ways you were screaming for the help you didn’t get. It shows us all, now that there are no breaths left to listen for.

Everyone has a story. Everyone. Even those society dismisses as just another fill-in-the-blank. They are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters.  They are fathers and mothers. Friends and lovers. They are someone’s joy, and heartbreak. Sometimes they make bad choices, or fall through the cracks. They become just another when we don’t know their stories; this is one of them.

Christofer DeFino was an off-the-charts brilliant, handsome young man. He was always ready to help out a friend, go above and beyond any expectation. He was one of five children, from a good family, a fairly traditional one. Dad worked a job that provided well for his family. Mom stayed home with the kids. Chris became an unofficial Girl Scout when his mother took on his sister’s Daisy troop, and the archery guy at Clatter Valley Day Camp for many years. He went to college, worked as a chemist in the up-and-coming field of medical marijuana—a field he was passionate about—sang karaoke whenever he got the chance, and hit the gym most every day. Everyone remembers his easy smile, his famous hugs, and that he never passed on by someone in need. Chris loved his girlfriend, his family, his friends, sushi, and chicken wings from TK’s. He had three goals in life, make a difference, get married, have kids.

And then there was the Chris few ever saw.

A freak accident at fifteen left him with a crippled leg, chronic pain, and PTSD. No, it is not just for veterans. In his head, a constant chaos of thoughts and feelings he couldn’t turn off. The cycle of surgeries, pain, anxiety and depression led to using painkillers, and when they became too expensive, heroin. He battled heroin for three years, and won with the help of a good doctor, a few good friends, the love of his family, and some heavy-duty anti-anxiety medication. He stayed clean for three years, got the anxiety under control, and felt like he was finally going to be ok. We all did.

In April, he got the job of his dreams, moved out of his childhood home, and was happier than he’d ever been in his life.  Come June 22, he was gone. Accidental overdose. It was three weeks from the time he realized the depression wasn’t going away to the day he died. Three weeks. It happened that fast.

When someone has cancer, no one says it’s their fault, that if they’d only been stronger, it wouldn’t have happened. If that same cancer patient goes into remission, then the illness returns three years later, no one passes them off as being weak or flawed or otherwise dismissible as “just another cancer patient.” And yet society does this to those suffering from these mental illnesses even doctors admit to being flummoxed by.

There is no saying why some people with cancer get treatment and beat it, while others with the same cancer, getting the same treatment, don’t. Sometimes, a person suffering depression or any other label-of-the-masses mental illness gets treatment, gets well, and manages to live a productive life. Sometimes, they don’t. It’s not their fault. They didn’t ask for it. And yet the stigma is undeniable. They’re told to smile, feel better. What does a handsome, intelligent, well-off, twenty-five year old have to be sad about? The choices they make are desperate ones, because not only does no one understand, no one seems to want to.

I write this today as a battle cry, mixed in with motherly love. Drugs, alcohol, reckless behavior of any kind is a symptom of something more, something bigger, and something no one wants to know about. It’s easier to dismiss them as addicts, their actions as irresponsible decisions made of their own free wills. When someone suffers from this kind of mental chaos, turning off becomes the only way to get some relief. No one chooses heroin for fun. No one gets fall-down drunk on a daily basis because it’s what kids do. No one races their car at a hundred miles per hour, weaving in and out of traffic simply because they like the adrenaline rush. Look behind their curtains. See what’s really going on.

We did look behind our son’s curtain. We knew what was going on. And we thought we were addressing it as we had in the past. Chris didn’t make it. Why? We’ll never have real answers, but one thing is certain—the mental health issue is still horribly misunderstood, misrepresented, and sadly maligned.

No one could have fought harder than Chris. His courage and strength in the face of all his pain faltered, and in that faltering, he made a terrible decision. One that cost him, and those who love him, his life. We can eradicate heroin from society, jail every dealer who ever dealt, but until we learn more about anxiety and depression, especially in our young people so obviously at risk, we’re going to keep losing them to their own brand of helping themselves.

Because the dark pit they’re desperately trying not to fall into is that terrifying.

This isn’t going to turn into a tribute site for my son. Promise. Modesty is for Suckers is a writer’s blog, not a grieving mother’s blog, but I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve. I keep no secrets. I hold nothing back. And this is now part of my life. It’s going to be reflected in my writing. Thirty years after my first husband’s death, he still makes it into everything I write. This will be no different. Nothing’s going to stop it, even if I try.

I am a writer. Those of you who claim the same know that we think differently. It’s our job to make characters, their worlds and their circumstances, believable. We notice things others don’t, because in those tiny details, our stories not only come to life, they dive to depths a reader might not actively notice, but will absorb all the same.

During these harrowing days, I’m still noticing. I’m not looking for signs from my son that he’s near, and maybe that’s why he’s been so blatant about nudging me. It wasn’t just finding his door open the day after it all happened, when I know my husband had purposefully shut it the night before, or his cat being in there and refusing to come out. It wasn’t just the little black squirrel at the feeder when I’ve never seen one before or since. It’s not all the people sending me messages about spotting deer and having an overwhelming feeling of him. It’s not my friend showing up with a gift for me, a little turtle with the words, “One Day At A Time” on it’s back–she had no idea his nickname for me was Turtle. It’s not even the tapping on my shoulder through the shower curtain yesterday, or waking up this morning to find last night’s locked door wide open to the new day. Coincidence? Chris? As I said in my last post, whatever it is, so be it. I’ll choose to believe what I wish.

Aside from the poem I wrote about in my prior post, there was one undeniable message that I think you’d have to have been here to truly believe. I’ll do my best, but I’m still kind of stunned and trying to find a scientific explanation for what happened.

Chris’ girlfriend spent the night with us a few nights ago, and mentioned that it upset her to see his door closed. My son was always freaky about keeping his door closed, even when he was little. He didn’t like the cats in his room (maybe because Gyro peed on his bed twice when we first got him!) It was just his thing. But I agreed with his girlfriend. I didn’t want the door closed either. So upstairs I went, armed with one of those rubber, wedge doorstops. I jammed it under the door, tested it to make sure it would stay, and got to work writing in my loft.

Hours later, the door gently closed. Not a slam, just softly. There really wasn’t a breeze, but I hadn’t been paying attention. I opened the door up again, but found that the rubber stopper wasn’t there. It hadn’t wriggled free. It hadn’t been pushed with the door as it closed. The damn thing was all the way across the room, as if kicked, and in the opposite direction of what it would have been had the wind closed the door. I tried every which way to get it to do it again, but there’s just no physical way the stopper could have ended up where it was, especially given that the door gently closed, not slammed.

I said, “Fine, Chris. I’ll leave the door closed for now, but only for now.”

His room is mostly empty. We kept a few things. I don’t want to erase him from this house, but I can’t bear leaving things as if he’s still here, either. I’m not going to see that smile, hear him call me Turtle, get wrapped up in one of those big hugs of his, but I feel him whether I like it or not. He’s going to make sure of it. And I’m so glad.