I spoke tonight

I spoke to parents and high school students tonight and as I did so, I realized it has been almost a year since I last spoke to an audience for Sam’s Watch. A year is almost half the time that I’ve been without Sam; it’s been not yet three years since he died overnight at sixteen, unknowingly, from a synthetic drug, 25i-NBOMe. That’s when my whirlwind existence began. The world did not stand still when I lost my son. Time did not cease to exist. So I have not been allowed to either. I’m in my second year of grad school now and actually counseling clinical patients under supervision; they come in all reasons and seasons. We all are broken. For me, while grieving is considered an acceptable, healthy reaction to the loss of a loved one, to use Freud’s term, melancholia, is unequivocally the unhealthy as its pathological twin. I’ve spent much time with Melly… with physically ill health symptoms that permeate my skin but are not really originating from my body but my mind and within the tight grasp of emotional conflict that chomps down on me so intently, like a bone that once in her jaws, my new puppy, Jessie, would not let go of. 

In the first year after my son’s death, the mania of melancholia was only experienced slightly as it was tuned out to me personally with the daily dealing of broken heartedness in my grief work. One-by-one memories were stripped from my mind, segregated and reimagined, devastatingly, with the reality of an unhappy ending imposed upon them. One at a time the withdrawal from attachment to the one that I loved and lost occurred: no graduating high school, no attending college, no first job experience, no wedding day happiness. Some of the memories came readily with bursts of tears while others were experienced in silence as I hunkered on the couch watching movies, drove past places we spent time together or bitterly, sweetly saw his year younger brother or his friends reach milestones that my son would not. It was in the manic of this melancholia or Melly, my friendly term of endearment, that I was able to effectively speak to so many thousands of students, parents, communities. It was also the constant feedback loop of my emotionally blocked amygdala, I was able to recount in great detail how my son left this Earth. My amygdala or Migdy, that place in my brain home to my emotional awareness.

Once Migdy set its block like a football defensive player, my emotional responding was pure fight or flight reactions rescuing me from my trauma. I know the play where my amygdala was officially, emotionally blocked.; taking me out of the game of life and living more or less on pure adrenaline. It’s me walking in slow motion from my kitchen to my foyer, in my striped pastel colored and cottony soft, almost terry cloth texture, robe, hearing the voice of a man I’ve never met before… then seeing his opened left hand lowering to his left body side, elbow bent in a way to reach in and pull something out of his side jacket pocket; it seemed like it was all happening in slow-motion but it wasn’t. I was just trapped there, in time, before I saw what he was reaching for. Then as close to the second before I saw what he was about to show, I heard my voice say… to myself… “Sam is dead.” Between that inner voice moment and the actual moment I saw the man reveal what was in his pocket which was Sam’s wallet, Migdy did me the greatest favor I could have asked for. It blocked the rest of my brain so as not to be overwhelmed with the tragedy I was faced with. Migdy did what it should have done as far as I’m concerned. I’m thankful. It gave me the resource to turn and see my younger son, Nick, coming down the second floor foyer stairs. To turn towards him with open arms as he came to me and put his head on my shoulder and to then put my arms around him and hold him while speaking softly in his ear with only dry tears as I stroked his curly brown hair and with assured strength in my voice said, “It’s okay, Nick. Moms got you. It’s okay. I've got you.” 

Tonight, I was faced with an audience that I stood before and spoke out loud to with a voice that knew more than ever what I was saying… my son is gone.#muchlovetosam