if only I could grip the wheel tight enough. With great deliberation, I kept taking one breath in, one breath out, one breath in, one breath out. With each breath, I recounted what I knew, and what I didn't want to know, which were actually one and the same thing.
I knew my twenty-five year old son Erik hadn't come home last night, but that this had happened before. I knew his schizoiphrenia had deteriorated in the last year, and that his life had spiraled into a nightmare of haunting loneliness and constant fear, although he had recently been more stable than several previous periods of his life. I knew I had just seen him last night night, before I went out to dinner with friends, and he had seemed good - happy almost. I knew I felt uncomfortable when I got home later that night, feeling like something was amiss, but decided I was too tired to go downstairs and check on him.
I recalled my son Jason's first call of earlier in the morning, "Mom, my hunting gun is gone", and the resulting surreal buzzing that sentence left in my brain. So I knew Erik had a gun. I knew we had searched a motel earlier that morning that he had stayed at once before, when he had "gone missing". We had attempted to fill out a missing person's report at the police station, met with such indifference that I feared my other son would grab the policeman and he would wind up in jail!!
By the time I got to my driveway, I could not stop praying, "God, if someone is hurt, please don't let him have hurt someone else."
Looking back at that drive home, I am in awe of the human mind and body. I was a mother who was about to receive the most heart-wrenching news a parent can hear. Somewhere deep in my soul I already knew that. When Jason called, I could have easily begun weeping on the spot, simply out of fear, if for no other reason. I could have begged him to tell me immediately; instead I protected myself and him from that exchange, perhaps knowing already he would have so much pain, how could I ask him to be the one to tell me my son was dead? Instead I simply obeyed his one sentence, "You have to come home now."
It's funny that I can't remember walking into my house, into my kitchen. Somehow those few moments are blank; first I was anchored to the safety of that steering wheel, and then I was standing in my kitchen, in front of two nicely dressed strange men, and Jason was in my peripheral vision. I had not made eye contact with my son. I just stood in front of the plain-clothes policeman. And then I heard his words about my son Erik. Then I heard him say he had to ask me a few questions.
But time was standing still, and I suddenly heard myself telling him to get out of my house. He was gently saying if he didn't talk to me then, he would have to come back. Why was he being so nice to me, when I was being so rude to him and telling him to leave my house? And I simply said again, to get out of my house, and this time started to walk away so he would understand that I wasn't going to talk to him. As I turned, he gave me his card, and said to please call him when I could.
And then I sat down in a comfortable chair, put my head into my hands, and Jason was with me, gripping me as tight as he could.
I am telling you this story because it was the moment I started my journey to survive the loss of my son. Everyone's loss is so very different, yet I know that everyone remembers the moment they either heard the news of their loved one's death. or found them. For those of you who discovered your loved one's body, my heart goes out to you.
While this has been a long road, I have arrived to this place and would like to share my thoughts with you. For those of you who would like to respond, please feel safe and welcome to do so. And if you would like to post a thought or memory of your loved one on the memorial page, please also do that.
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