10:15am Writing Practice 56° Boise
Chilly and windy this morning, but the sun is shinning. It feels like spring has been lasted forever this year, like it started the first of March or even earlier and it's still working on it. I love the slow way the seasons creep along around here. Although sometimes summer seems to slam into spring in a day, as if it were an oncoming train carrying heat and change and it knocks the pleasant, slow moving spring off the tracks and into the ditch for the rest of the year. Winter can arrive that same way after a delightful fall that has lasted for months. Maybe that just the way to the seasons. Spring and fall are the transition seasons and summer and winter have the real power. Interesting. I used to be a summer person but now, here, at this time of my life, I like all the other seasons better, especially the transitions.
I had dinner with the POMS last night (Pissed Off Moms). There are four of us, each with a different experience of our sons and drugs. I'm the only one with a lost one. Janna has Kaelen in prison right now, CarlaJean has two who are doing good after years of using and then prison, and Sharon has her one son who is in the thick of it still ... after prison and now in a relapse that involved a suicide attempt last month. Turns out it was his 4th attempt and we all know what that means now. It's only a matter of time until he succeeds unless he can be turned around somehow.
Sharon asked me what I would say to him if I could sit down and talk and I got confused in my head. What if I make things worse? After all, I was talking to Stephen as he jumped off a building! Then she asked me a question that has me kind of inspired: "What would you tell Stephen right now, knowing what you know? If you wrote him a letter, what would you say?" All the way home, I imagined sitting down to write to him and maybe even formatting our book with letters like that. Also, on the way to the dinner, I listened to a program on NPR and they had a segment about the power of listening, ending with a story about Mother Theresa. When asked what she said in her prayers, she answered, "I listen". When asked what God says, she answered, "He listens". Right then, I decided that I had to become a better listener. And then Sharon asked that question and now I have to figure out how to write to Stephen and really listen. I believe he can help me find the words to help others, whether it's the person in distress or the mothers, the parents, the families, the communities, all the hundreds and thousands of people who are affected by suicide of a loved one.
Dear Stephen,
It's been 133 weeks today since your last day on Earth, a little over 2½ years and so much has changed since you left, new information, new experiences --- I feel certain that we could have found the help you needed if you had just stayed a little longer. I understand that you were miserable and felt hopeless down to your very soul, I felt that coming off of you in waves those last few days of your life. I even told your dad earlier that day, "What are you waiting for?! Get down there, he can't take much more!" Since then I realize that you died of much more than suicide, you died from lack of respect as well.
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