8:20am Writing Practice 56° Boise
Up early because of Rocky. 6:50am and he wanted something, he kept at it long enough to keep me awake until I finally got up about a half hour ago. It's a rainy day, gray and dark and chilly. I've got relaxing music on the TV along with the ocean scenes and sounds. That's my favorite so far. This is the Pacific by California, out where Stephen is. I should move to the ocean again. I would really like to move somewhere ... anywhere ... else. But I can't seem to muster the energy to sell my house and pack up to go. I don't want to give up all I've worked for with this idea of security and then lose my mind and be drifting and homeless. Like a crazy person. Like who I think I'm becoming.
If you could see, what it's done to me, to lose the love I had ..... I woke up with this lyric running through my head while I was laying there ignoring Rocky. Moody Blues. I'm doing OK and yet, I'm lost and adrift. If I can't find a way to move forward on my own, I'll have to get a job or go back to St Luke's. I'm getting mighty tired of wallowing.
I had a memory this morning of something that happened while we were living in Hanford, on Colonial Drive, in 2000. It was morning, must have been spring, and I heard a terrible ruckus out by the patio. I ran out to see big flapping black wings and a mother crow attacking Toby, my manx cat, as he was focused on attacking her fledgling baby. Toby had him trapped in a corner by the garage and even though the mother crow was cawing and flapping at him, he was determined not to be sidetracked, he was having that baby bird. I don't remember exactly what I did to break it up --- I probably picked Toby up and put him in the house and let the mother crow coax her baby to safety. But afterward I thought about the symbolism of that situation and how very like that mother crow I was with my fledgling Stephen, how I felt just like that mother crow, helpless and flapping against a foe I couldn't stop and didn't even really understand. How prophetic. That's when I first realized just how dire our situation was, that, in fact, we could lose him. I believe I wrote about it in my journal, I treated it like the warning it surely was. And still, I lost him.
It's no wonder I'm traumatized. In many of the suicide stories I read, the parents didn't have a clue that their child was having problems or was depressed or being bullied or using drugs. The shock and horror of the suicide is understandable, it was an unthinkable thing to have happen to their child. Not so for me, I knew for many years that I could lose him that way (although I never thought of him jumping off a building). I had at least 13 years warning of what was to come, plenty of time to take action to turn it all around. And I did take action! Why wasn't I able to change the final outcome?
Is this the story I need to tell? Is it possible that I knew all this was coming from the moment I met John Sandknop that night in Hawaii in 1981? Even at the time, I could tell something momentous was happening, something had clicked into place, I was caught in a preset time line and all I could do was play it out. And 32 years later, it all came to a head and I had the experience of a lifetime, but not in a good way. Such a story to tell, but so many details, where to start and what to tell, what to leave out?
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