Operation Find Self - Part 1

By high school, Sam had shelves full of trophies from nearly a decade of playing basketball.  It was his sport with a year-round routine that occurred so much that it was ingrained in his being.  In regard to what I’m sharing, at that time of year, his day involved morning power endurance and after school basketball practice.  I was picking him up at the high school gym entrance.  Sam walked to my SUV, opened the front passenger door, climbed in with his tall lankiness and casually tossed his heavy-burdened school bag in the back seat,  It was a routine ingrained into my being as well.  I started the car, put it in drive and Sam buckled his seat belt.  I took off heading out of the school parking lot towards home.  It was sunny and still light out as I recall.  I guess there was more silence in the car than usual as Sam’s first words after we exited the parking lot was, “Did you have a bad day, mom?”  I was caught off-guard by his question so I had to let the question settle a moment.  I remember thinking, it wasn’t a bad day necessarily.  It was a trying day but nothing of the sort that a teen might identify with perhaps.  Yet there was something about me that he was picking up that gave him the idea that I wasn’t my usual self.  I remember thinking how this was a moment to bring Sam into my life and share with him some of my day.  As I started though, I told him “No, it wasn’t a bad day.  I had an unusual day at work.  Let me tell you about it.”  He listened intently; he always did.  He asked a few questions and after I was finished he adjusted his red basketball shorts, pulling them downward at his thighs with his large, thin hands.  Then he started another subject about current events.  He seemed content as he relaxed his posture.  I recall this moment clear as day; I see it visually.  Maybe because not much more than a year later, I knew what a bad day really was.  Sam wasn’t there to tell.

Yes, there is thanksgiving

It was the first semblance of a Thanksgiving Day since my 16-year-old academics-honor son, Sam, died from teen curiosity and unknowingly took a synthetic drug that killed him overnight.  That happened three years ago.  I died three years ago.  I live today in the glory of love.  I had avoided the holiday season in years past like the plague.  This year I thought was different.  Truth be known, I’m still in many ways dead to the world.  I celebrated the holiday for my family that remains post-mortem because they deserve that.  With what they have faced and dealt with in the past three seasons, warrants that they deserve a peaceful heart… if not a peaceful day as well for Thanksgiving.  

What I deserve is not even a question.  I don’t use the same measurement stick.  Instead I lick my pointer finger and raise it to the air and see which way the wind blows, day-by-day. On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I was busy with what the holiday provides... love.  I was thankful.  I was prayerful that God watch over those who are not here with us this holiday season except in our hearts… always, in our hearts.

The day after Thanksgiving, I slept through.  What seemed five minutes was actually an hour and by the time I could groggily awaken my spirits the day was over.  I existed that day no other way.  I was thankful.  

I thought I had sufficiently celebrated and survived the holiday until I was in grad school class Monday afternoon.  My professor shared how his mother had been ill and his emotional roller coaster of the Thanksgiving break.  As he concluded, I could empathize with his roller coaster and I felt I could share that my holiday, too, was emotional.  As that led to his questions and my answers I only know to be mine, he shared how a friend of his had experienced loss and in the throes of grief had told him he had laid in the grass for a period of time one day.  I then felt open enough to share that I too, had experienced a time with a blanket laying in my front yard in the late summer grass after my Sammy had died.  As I had laid there, I had fallen asleep and a neighbor had passed by and disturbed my blanket to ask me if I was okay.  I had told them I was.  And I was.  For my okay.  Then as dusk approached, Nick had come out to the front yard and awoken me again.  He helped me up and inside at that point.  My professor then asked me what it was that I was trying to achieve by laying out in the yard like that.  I was trying to achieve surviving I told him.  And I did.  I lived another day of the horror in losing my child.  #muchlovetosam 

To Right Injustice

It was barely one year after the tragic loss of my sweet 16-year-old son, Sam, when I started grad studies, Fall 2015, at Christian Theological Seminary. I was immediately embraced by the community of my CTS cohorts. I felt loved. I was so thankful.  Many of them still remain to provide love and support but they are in other programs now. What I’m left with in my third year of grad school, I felt intensely Monday night. A cohort’s comments provided a trigger for me that reeked with lack of information.  As I provided vehemently some of that information, although hidden until I said it out loud in the room, was my cohort’s agenda of a race issue around the opioid drug epidemic.

He laughed when I voiced, “So is this a race issue?” His laugh continued as he smiled and said, “Yes.” His affect seemed so odd to me. I would never smile about the death of my son from experimenting and unknowingly taking a synthetic hallucinogen drug that killed him overnight, or the sadness and life changing pain I experienced in the devastating aftermath. My cohort’s pain was with race, yet it seemingly allowed him to smile. I was envious. Still I was the one that brought the idea of race into the room and out from the shadows; a single, 50-plus, suburban, white woman.

What he had been commenting on, was that now the “media” as another student cohort chimed in, was talking of treatment for the opioid drug epidemic. I asked where this treatment was in our community. Neither cohort responded. The smiling cohort grinned again and said, “You act like you expect me to know what the treatment is.” Yes, actually, I did. When I go out and speak about my pain, treatment updates are something that I unfortunately consider for passing on to my audience.

The thoughts voiced thereafter by the same and other students, included the preface, “Not to take away from Jeanine’s loss but…” As if my loss could be taken away? No, changing the past was not an option when I was suffering my pain. Death is not temporary. Instead, with no other option, I worked to change the future.

Now, if I am to listen to my cohort, that work that was my pain is not to be recognized either because it came after the past crack and heroin epidemic and injustices. In fact, my work and that of the army of families effected by the opioid crisis, shows what wasn’t done in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s drug epidemics. But that is precisely why I used my pain for betterment… to right injustice; life is not fair. In grief, I empowered myself. I created a nonprofit. I work painfully as an advocate. I just want to change the world. #muchlovetosam

Happiness be told

My life didn’t turn out.  No life map to be imagined now will paint a pretty picture when a life no longer exists.  What I had to offer the world left me when my 16-year-old academics-honor son, Sam, died three years ago from unknowingly taking a synthetic drug called N-BOMe as a curious teen.  I am not alone in unbelievable devastation of the loss of a child.  “A recent analysis of the CDC data by the New York Times found that the rising death rates of white adults between the ages of 25 and 34 made them "the first generation since the Vietnam War years of the mid 1960's to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it." But while the mortality rate for whites has been steadily rising, the death rates of blacks and Hispanics has continued to fall.”

“The drug epidemics that devastated minority communities in the '70s, '80s, and '90s created a shared aversion to hardcore drugs like heroin and crack. Marcus Anthony Hunter, an assistant professor of Sociology and African American Studies at UCLA, said minority communities are still feeling the effects of the zero-tolerance response by law enforcement to those drug epidemics.  "Now that the problems of drugs have noticeably reached the vanilla suburbs, questions and claims or morality have been contested in ways often unavailable to urban minority communities," Hunter said. "Where urban minority areas are thought to be amoral breeding grounds, suburban white areas are thought to be upstanding, respectable force fields from the ills of drug use. As it turns out, neither is exactly true.”  

What I offer now.  No, neither is true.  I’ve lived the undeniably, devastating pain to know that it is not.  In the shadow of my darkness with the gallows of my heartache hanging from above; it is the only life I have to live.  Trying to find my survival, my brain has aptly followed my heart at a cautiously, safe and guarded distance as my mind suffers, too; recalls, plots, plans, still dreams and wishes.  Yes, just here to change the world by blazing a trail and finding the way that shows my heart is full; not dead.  I will always love you Sammy; and our sweet, precious, forever memories.  #muchlovetosam

Quoted source: https://news.vice.com/article/heroin-kills-white-people-more-than-anyone-else-and-nobody-is-sure-why 

The weekend that never happened

I'm so excited to be traveling to the Purdue campus and West Lafayette this weekend, Parent's weekend. I'm the parent for a young man about campus that I could not be prouder of and could not love more, or so I think. In his first semester, he is adjusting responsibly to his class requirements and it shows in his GPA. My son, Nick, has made it onto the Purdue Men's Club Basketball team, last year's Club National Champions. He has found his peeps. He is going to have a guest performance back home during the holiday season, locally, in "The Nutcracker", with his high school sweetheart. And he seemingly is doing these in an "it's a day" moment. Enjoying his life. I love him. I couldn't love him more. I wanted this for his brother, Sam, too, originally his year older brother who died instead from unexpectedly in his curiosity, taking what he thought was LSD but instead was an hallucinogen designer drug, N-Bomb. It was three years ago at the age of 16 that Sammy left us.

In 2014, I never thought I'd get to seeing Nick in college as I didn't think I would be "here." Instead, I am seeing Nick excel at college, at Purdue, his dream, and experiencing his early engineering studies. Not defined by his brother, Sam, now gone, Nick is loved by so many and lifted up in blessings, yet so realistically still a young man of 18. Where life goes, no one truly knows. Who we become, never who we imagined we would be. Pushed beyond our original measures, enduring what we never knew life provided, we become what we never knew before. In the midst of love, is my hope. #muchlovetosam

Going home

Tonight I pull into the driveway of my home on a street that means "heaven's view" in another language. A home new to me since I lost my son Sam three years ago at the sweet age of 16. He was curious about drugs and he thought LSD or Acid would protect him from a possible school random drug test after the weekend was over. He was unknowingly sold poison. A synthetic hallucinogen drug called 25i-NBOMe. It was legal six months before he died. A drug user bought it over the internet from overseas, like China. It arrived in the mail at his door step where he was on house arrest at the age of 24. He never left his house when he mixed it with Everclear and put it on blotting paper as he described to law enforcement when he was arrested days after my son's death. He sold it as LSD to the 19 year old drug user my son had been put in contact with. The Marion County Assistant District Attorney asked him in court why he sold the dangerously lethal synthetic drug as LSD. After a deafening silence that lasted way too long, he said he didn't know.

I was alone in court that day just as I am now when I pull in my drive. Once a younger brother with joy at his fingertips from being the baby of the family, Sam's brother Nick is now 18 and a Freshman at Purdue. Sam gone at 16 and a Sophomore at Center Grove High School. Three years after loss and living life on another level. The home I'm walking into is deafly quiet although the portraits on the wall show eyes filled with laughter and smiles that overflow happiness. Home.

The journey

I was in a place I never thought I’d be today yet it was a place that I was familiar with.  A conference speaking engagement similar to many I’ve had over the past three years since my son, Sam, died at the age of 16 from an accidental drug overdose of unbelievable proportions to my family and ultimately, my life existence.  He had “only been experimenting.”  As if that changes the final outcome.  No, he is dead.  And I experience that he is no longer in my life every day; a multitude of times, many moments of every day, moments that are never ending.  Do I wish that was different every minute of every day?  Yes, just like millions of other mothers who have lost children in this new war on drugs.  Excruciating, never ending pain.  A period of my life I wasn’t prepared for.  A period of my son’s life that he was not prepared for.  Had I not prepared him?

Today I spoke… I spoke many times in the aftermath of months after the knock on the door that Mother’s Day that communicated to me that not only was my son not alive anymore but my life was dead… a divorce, a move, a casualty of a blessing of a brother that is so unforgivingly lovingly that life through him is not only bearable, but saving grace.  

So I am blessed.  Even today.  Especially today.  I traveled to the conference with the most comfort I could ever have in this storm.  And upon arrival, I spoke my heart, as we all do, and at the end, there was a standing ovation.  A standing for us all in the loss of the massive storm that has taken away just like the tide dissipates, those we love beyond all measures… those we wish to see again yet know wishes are for those who believe in miracles… we know we are just here to change the world… #muchlovetosam

I'm not going anywhere

He said, “I’m not going anywhere, babe.”  I knew he meant what he said.  I trusted him.  

Just hearing the words, sent me reeling, whirl winding, back to another who was to be there early the next morning after he spent the night with a friend.  He was my son.  He was 16.  He intended to return the next morning.  He had free will.  In the midst of the night, though, he was gone.  A night that until the next morning when the Sheriff and the Coroner’s office knocked on my door, I had not known a dark side… of myself or of others in a struggle I am too familiar with now.  I slept innocently, naive, and lastly, soundly, through the night that my Sammy died but from that night on, I would not know that level of deep sleep for the thoughts of what happened that night while I slept peacefully would not allow me.  No time for a rest.  No escape.  No sound.  Silence in the night is maddening.  My son, Sammy… 16… curious… died.  I was not there.  I was not alone in my loss.  I was in absoluteness, purely broken.  No, he wasn’t going anywhere.  #muchlovetosam

Birthday wishes

I wanted to remember, yet couldn’t forget.  I wanted to forget, yet couldn’t not remember.  Another birthday without him; here on Earth Sam is 20.  My first born on June 26, 2017…

In my heart, the joy of him turning 16 is still with me.  As I saw his best friend this past month and saw how much of a grown man he is becoming, I realize my Sam of 16 would not be 20 now.  

His last birthday we celebrated together; Panama City Beach, Florida. A time and place I’ll remember the rest of my life.  My last vacation.  My last true vacation.  There will be no more rest.  I want to remember how much I love him, yet not forget.  #muchlovetosam

My love

I thought I should stop writing.  Not because I felt better but because I felt no one cared to hear how I really felt.  It has been three years now since my beautiful, enlightening son died at 16.  He was so young I realize now as his younger brother has turned 18, graduated from high school and prepares for Purdue in the Fall.  Sam is not in college; Nick going to college is not a repeat of an experience I’ve had in some way with his year older brother.  No, this is Nick’s experience for the first time.  This is my experience for the first time.  And I love Nick.  And I miss Sam.  I wish it wasn’t my first experience.  I wish… I wish but it doesn't change my reality.  #muchlovetosam

Yet another

It was a trying day and at the end of it, in the dark, I walked my way to the the mail box… the place I only go once a week if at most, so as not to be reminded of reminders I still cannot yet deal with… Tonight, as I opened the mail box, there was but one small envelope.  I was relieved at it's small site… and then I picked up the envelope, turned it over and looked at the return address.  My heart sank.  I knew it was an even more trying day than I had known yet knew not why.

The envelope was not addressed to me, but to Nick, so once inside, I placed it under his eyes.  As I then watched, focused on his eyes, as he opened the envelope and then read, line by line what the handwritten note said, the tears fell behind my eyes as I only imagined what it said.  He smiled and was pleased with the words… I was relieved and glad he was happy with the mail's arrival.  He handed the notebook paper with handwriting to me and I waited to read it until I was alone.

Behind closed doors where no one could see, I read what Nick had handed me.  There was a picture of Nick attached.  Nick as a 5th grader.  The note was from “little Nick” sincerely.  It was dated May 26, 2010.  A time when all seemed right with the world.  Nick played chess then and won the weekly award of the “Hallowed Geode of Chess” in Mr. Wooten’s class.  His smile at such an awesome achievement was priceless.  

Today's mail letter came in Nick’s handwriting and said, writing from fifth grade, "that he raised the flag every day"… indeed he did with one of his then and now closest friends… It says he "liked Mr. Wooton"… of course he did, Mr. Wooten was his and Sam’s fifth grade teacher and a man among men… It said his "favorite subject was social studies" and he would be waiting for this note in seven years.  It arrived today…

I’m so glad for Nick.  Sam had Mr. Wooten as a teacher also… Sam did not get his letter in seven years… How do you smile and cry at the same time?  Just how?

What a day

The next few weeks will be the most wonderful and most horrifying moments of my life.  They will be the most wonderful moments for Nick Motsay, my son, a high school senior.  They will be the most horrifying for me, minus Sam Motsay, my son, who died three years ago as a high school sophomore.  No matter the circumstances, we love our children as God loves us.

In the remainder of the month and carrying over into the summer, Nick Motsay will receive many accolades and promising signs of a future that will be fantabulous.  I will celebrate.  He is a beautiful young man with a mind and heart built of love and promise… he is blessed…

Sam Motsay is not a freshman in college amusingly awaiting the arrival of his brother into the same educational status.  Sam is not at Indiana University studying finance.  Nick is going to Purdue studying Chemical Engineering.  The finest line between the unbelievable and a promising future.  How not to take away from promise… how not to deny the have not…

Life sucks.  Life is amazing.  Life cannot take what we don’t allow it to take… life cannot give what we cannot open our heart to receive.  Many promises… many disappointments… life…

3am

On my drive home… Syrius playing loudly… Matchbox 20… The song is “3am.”  Being one of the songs I naturally feel the rhythm to, I begin singing… actually could be considered screaming but I’m in my car and no one can hear me, right?  My next thought as I’m singing the lyrics loudly and moving my arms in the air when not on the steering wheel and my top torso is feeling the beat too and fro, what the heck is this song about besides 3am?  Why 3am?  I think of the night my son Sam died and the death certificate time of death… again, why 3am? 

Home.  A google or two and at least 30 minutes later I have what my immediate search is for.  The song is about someone who has seen pain and death and gone beyond that… Okay.  It is about how life is so quick to leave us… Okay.  How a future can be like nothing matters because it is changed in an instance… Okay.  Like nothing matters because it is all going to be taken away… We have nothing and yet we have everything, because what we have and what we lose, all has an ending.

Where did that come from?  Why isn’t the song just about 3am with a beat that moves me to move and lyrics that feel good when I scream them?  This week is semester push week and I have many deadlines and will likely see 3am while cracking the books, so to speak.  I will be lonely… yet I’m not alone.  #muchlovetosam

Theology this

A long day today with my first theology class; in my fourth semester of grad school and the time has come.  My faith perspective I arrived at early in life but as my boys were born almost 20 years ago, my faith, too, was born anew.  Then my loss of my son, Sam, at sixteen, faith was not shattered, but it was a process in grasping what is most important in my own faith search beyond the unimaginable loss.  Studying at a seminary for my Master’s, I’ve enjoyed the comfort of recognition that we all are broken and we can be in the same room with one another and be who we are; broken.  Being in a room of theologians, especially those in study, I realize faith is not just a personal search but a mission for argument, arguing, debate.  In my role as a mental health professional, my role is compassion, seeking to understand and being present where my patients are so that I might acknowledge with them their pain and suffering.  There is no skin in a fight for my faith; only passion.  Thanks be to God.

Our closing consideration today was 1 Corinthians 13 read aloud four times with reflection in-between readings.  What a wonderful exercise in closing a day of learning God’s will for us, our will for ourselves and the most significant, salvation that Jesus represents as a person and with his works.  In the second reading of 1 Corinthians 13, we were asked to circle a word as it was read that was significant to us.  As we concluded and in reflection, to me it was: angels, nothing, endures, fully.  Third time in reading we were asked to underline one or more words, and in reflection to me it was:  “I am nothing,” “hopes all things,” “I have been fully known.”   

As I saw the sunset tonight, I was able to process that “I am nothing but I hope all things to be fully known” because as “angels exist around us, nothing endures fully.”  #muchlovetosam #muchpeacetoall

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

Love and melancholia

This is my first post in two months; my first of 2017.  I feel as though I’ve been to another indescribable hell and back; I know it now as the holiday season.  It’s been two and a half years… In that time, I’ve grieved the loss of my oldest son, Sam; his forlorn physical absence and my own soul searching for life’s now meaning.  I’ve mourned him with personal challenges to survive his death and move him forward with me as well as perceiving failings to be a good-enough mother to his brother Nick who is now in his Senior high school year.  So too, another loss-season now… melancholia.  Here, I am totally submerged in “my work” at surviving loss.  I don’t even know what “work” I am actually doing though.  I do know it consumes so much of my time and energy so my blank stare, buried face, off-beat chuckle, lost words or too much expression of care, likely gives away that I am not really present where I am.  I also know when it isn't hidden by illogical distraction, loss reveals its never-ending pain; loss hurts so physically, painfully, pit-in-your-stomach, head spinning, acid-in-your-throat, endless tearing, dripping nose, piercing stab-in-your-chest, bad.  In the simplest of thoughts, while the closest to Sam can think or talk of him in the past tense as the smiling, self-knowing teen of 16, to me, Sam is aging and he is now 19.  You see, he’s my first born, the oldest brother and Nick, his younger brother, is now 18.  That’s where my life finds me… still unimaginable.  #muchlovetosam

No contest

Sam Motsay did not vote in Election 2016; his first vote. I could not stand in the voting line with him and share his excitement, answer his last-minute questions before he entered the booth and then be with him after to share more of the same followed by a family dinner where it would have been discussed for more loving group commentary that would have had some part of laughter as chorus throughout. No that didn’t happen.

The thought of standing in line voting alone, without him, was enough to bring choked down cries that became stifled tears that streamed clear down my neck and also dripped off my chin while I soaked my shirt sleeve from wiping away what drops I could. It wasn’t that I couldn’t vote, it was that I just couldn’t. There was no conciliating what could not be.

I’d like to think that my son was not able to vote because of a purely bad decision but how many of those have we all made in our lifetime? My son was with two boys that did the same thing as well and they voted this election. So what else? I terrifyingly understand the new war on drugs. Drugs which we cannot keep from entering our country and harming our children. Last week two 13 year olds died the same as my son two years earlier. Although it’s no cure for what killed my son, the Narcan struggle is real, keeping people alive from heroin epidemic overdoses. We are losing a generation. A family with three sons has now buried all three as young men, with the third last week.

I have been a very private person most of my life. When my son died, yes, I wanted to run in the street shrieking as loud as I possibly could, kicking and hitting whatever I saw. When my son died and media knocked on my door, stood in court room hallways or attended engagements and asked for my comment, did I want to curse about how unfair life is in such devastation? Yes, I did. I think also of one of Sam’s dear friends who walked many times back and forth in front of our house crying that first summer. Lost, like we all were in the shock.

What could I do though? First, I stood on center stage with my son, Nick, beside me and I cried loudly with my words to educate: young people, adults, law enforcement, communities-at-large, then more with media, school administrators, government officials and agencies. With my family and friends, I started a nonprofit for awareness to try and save others from my pain by sharing it for common good. I left Corporate America and went to grad school to be a mental health counselor so I could try and help others whose journey is not what they wanted either. I focused my efforts towards legislative and support groups where I could aid positively.

With the two men who are today in jail from their involvement in my son’s death, I sat in so many court rooms for excruciating hours and over grueling months to see it come to an end. Even then, there was no end. I have forgiven to unbridle my heart; and I continue to when even true apologies never came. I know what happened to my son didn’t just happen to my son though. It happened to the sons and daughters of many; to good kids and good parents. Our rights taken from us overnight.

For reasons I still don’t yet know, I awoke the morning after the election with a hope I have not felt since my son’s death. It is a sense of hope that I have sought since his death though. Hope is organic I now can know. When it comes, I’ll embrace it for whatever possibilities to make this world better than it was for my son, Sam; better than it has turned out for me; better for what it can be for all including my son, Nick. I’ll try and do this while I cherish every memory and love in each moment. #muchlovetosam

Answering the call

Monday night football with my team… the Chicago Bears; I am from Illinois.  Sitting with the someone I was meeting to watch the game with and the conversation turns to friendship.  My someone says that they have many acquaintances but only a few close friends.  Usually ,I have two buckets:  those with so many acquaintances are extroverts and those with only a few close friends are introverts.  I always considered myself an introvert.  Obviously, my someone considered himself both but then my thoughts returned to the conversation and he said, “I have friends that if they called me no matter what time of day it was and asked me to do something I would do it without question.”  I was triggered back to a time and place that I will seemingly not escape.  

I remember making that call he was referring to.  I called her that morning and all I remember saying is that she needed to come now.  She asked, “What happened?”  I said, “It’s Sam.”  She said, “I’ll be right there.”  And she was right there; for that first hour, that first day, the days that followed one into another.  She made the CD play list for the visitation.  She was there for the visitation and she didn’t need to stand beside me because she knew I knew she was there.  Her husband made the video for the funeral.  She was there for the funeral.  She was there for the nights that followed the funeral.  She stayed with me, she went grocery shopping, she made sure Nick’s schedule was maintained.  She made me get out of bed every day when otherwise I would have slept the day away.  The days she was there quickly turned into weeks then into months and finally into a year.  She was still there.  She took my call…

About players

I was sitting in a local establishment with yet another date of dates when he said,”Hey, Dave…” obviously not talking to me so I continued to munch down on my patty melt; silly, yes, and also the truth.  “Dave” approached us and my date began a conversation with him as I enjoyed my sandwich.  My date was polite and introduced me and I was polite back and shook “Dave’s” hand.  They talked some more with promises of connecting soon and the other niceties that go along with that.  Then “Dave” shook my hand again and I expressed it was nice to meet him a final time.  “Dave” left us and my date proceeded to tell me about “Dave.”  He wanted me to know “Dave” is a “real player”… you know, like the kind in the community… Ah, yes, players, I thought… 

 remember a simpler life before my son Sam died unexpectedly from a drug overdose of poison known as synthetic 25i-NBOMe when I too, might have been interested in who a player of the community might be.  Today, two and a half years after my son’s death, I am the most essential player in my life, a player of a painful life.  Every day I play with the idea of getting out of bed when everything in my body denies me that possibility.  I struggle to make it somewhere that I feel I really don’t need to be but this life calls us to do something and that is my something for the time.  I play at caring about others talk about their family as I recall mine has been broken into shreds since Sam died.  I become angry; first, at myself, then at Sam.  Sam was a kid though.  One of three kids that took the same drug they thought was LSD but Sam didn’t wake up the next morning.  Instead, he was found dead.  My life as I knew it was over.  My life I now do not know.

Then I thought about the players my date was referring to.  I recalled first living in Grand Rapids, Michigan working in “the big ice cube building downtown” as Sam called it when he was only 5.  There I had met player upon player in the law firm I worked for as a business consultant.  An insightful work experience was with one of those so-called players.  Dave Van Andel, son of one of the Amway founders, who had created a spin off that I was involved in helping to succeed.  He headed the Van Andel Institution at the time and was in ownership of the Grand Rapids hockey team among other interests.  The Van Andel’s owned an island… 

On the 9-11, I had been in Dave Van Andel’s executive conference room at the Amway Corporate office that morning as the first of what was happening at the twin towers was reported.  It was being shown on the conference room t.v. as the small executive group in the meeting looked on.  I left that meeting, picked up my babies and went directly to my home.  I was with my babies, Sam and Nick, the rest of the day.

Then I think about an innocent group of boys practicing basketball at the Sugar Grove Elementary gym while on my phone I get a call from the Governor’s Chief of Staff.  The purpose of the call is to verify numbers for an executive report; numbers which as a project consultant I know by heart and so that along with the cordial demeanor of the Governor’s staff makes the call go seemingly quickly and very well.  I ended the call and looked through the small glass square of the gym door.  I saw the young boys on the court and my eyes zeroed in on the one that I brought into this world and I smiled. I wish I could have seen him all of the practice I thought then.  I know now…  #muchlovetosam    

Throw it all away

She asked me what was I throwing up… I understood the metaphor but had no answer.  We talked some more. 

I thought about something I had read that week.  Alone and by ourselves, no one to fight with so who do we fight with?  We fight with our self and for many of us, we tear ourselves to shreds.  I had been alone that whole weekend; on my own accord.  Nick had left for his dad’s that Friday so by nightfall I was left to my own demise. 

By Saturday morning I was not physically well.  From headache, migraine, whatever; by Saturday night fall I was throwing up the only morsels of the day to the point I had dry heaves by the time I laid my head on the pillow.  When I awoke Sunday morning, again I was not well to present myself to the world.  I had solace in the refuge of my home, my place of peace and solitude… not only for Sunday but what carried over into Monday as well.  Monday afternoon brought a new sort of despair that is only explainable to one in grief, their closest support and those with knowledge of grief. 

So again, at the end of my sharing my weekend, again she asked, what were you throwing up?  I was throwing up guilt I said. She said, “Yes, you were.”  #muchlovetosam