When my first husband and I separated, I took my nine month old daughter and moved back to Houston.  At the time I still loved him deeply.  We were on cordial terms although we knew we were not going to be together again.  We were trying to work out, child support, who would raise the child and thinking about a no fault divorce.  Meanwhile, my brother and his wife allowed Jennifer and me to stay at their home while I found work.  My niece was a couple of years old at the time and my brother and his wife constantly had vicious fights.  When I could I would take the two little girls out for a walk or to play.

Jenny was just learning to say a few words, Judi was past  using diapers and bottles.  I first worked at a nursery school which was very poorly organized and hired women who were just short of incompetent.  So I quit and took Jennifer out of that environment.  I went to charity stores where I found the perfect blue polkadot dress to wear to interviews for about a quarter (doesn’t that seem impossible)?  Interviewed many places and ended up working as a file clerk (before computers became widespread) doing this rolling machine, tiny card by card.  I eventually saved enough money to leave my brothers home and to move to a hippie area in Houston which had good bus service.

Meanwhile, I got back in contact with two friends, William and Andy.  William and I used to go out with each other and just end up at interesting places, where we had adventures.  Bill was my night in shining armor and would come and pick Jenni and me up even though it was 15 or 20 miles from where he lived.  My mom, would pick me up after work. She used to drop me off to pick Jenni up at the home nursery where she stayed when I was working. She would sometimes take me to my brother’s home or Jen and  I would take the bus. Another friend had found out I was back in Houston, probably through Andy. She recommended  me  for an opening,I  interviewed well and got a job working at the University of Houston library.  I spent Christmas that year at my friend William’s apartment with Jenni, in order to have time with a friend and to be with a happy person.

We drank magic Christmas morning and all three of us slept together.  Jenni slept later than we did and we were chatting away when a friend of Bill’s that lived below him came up a flight yelling and screaming about the fact that Bill had a woman with him, knocked the door until it shook and soon after the door was opened,fists were flying and Bills jaw was broken.  As this happened, I called the police, hoping they wouldn’t know we were high and would help my friend out.  The crazy jealous young man eventually left, my daughter slept through the event, and the police arrived.  Jen and I got ready to go, William took us back to my brother’s house, and then went to a hospital to get checked out.  He had a broken jaw and I don’t remember, but his nose may have been broken too.  You might think that this was the only shock of the day and the times, but it wasn’t.

Later, John my husband called that day and told me he definitely wanted a divorce. He also let me know how wonderful his girlfriend was (I had met her before I left Indiana where we had lived in a little town called Mishawaka).

A few months later I was working filing those tedious cards, had one of the worst headaches of my life and couldn’t concentrate and just hung on until I could leave those ugly files.  Mom picked me up dropped me off to pick up Jenni and we rode the bus until we were close enough to my brother’s house, to walk. Soon after I arrived I got a phone call from my favorite sister in law Jill…

“Hi Jill I’m so glad to hear you, this has been a horrific day and it is the first good thing that has happened today.”  She was silent for a bit as we chatted.  And then she hesitated and told me, I’ve got something to tell you,  Johnny is dead.  He died of a heart aneurism in the hospital and his last words were “God take me”.

My brother congratulated me, because he said, “I would now have some money”.  I couldn’t wait to leave.

It is 1986, and they are casting the original Broadway company of "Les Miserables." I want to play Jean Valjean.
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As the family upgraded to newer, better cars, it got so I could drive the older one almost exclusively even though I wasn’t technically the owner. A two-tone green Cadillac that was old but didn’t exactly qualify as a beater became known as The Green Hornet. What a tank. It was like a couple of big, comfy sofas wrapped in metal that has made all subsequent cars feel like a tomato can to me.

My friends and I would bomb around in it, ski-jogging in winter, cruising Riv in all seasons. Riv, or the Riv, Riverside Avenue, the main drag going through downtown, was all of maybe 10 blocks and kids from all over the city would come and cruise slowly, windows down in every kind of weather, checking each other out. At the end they would turn around and cruise back again, looping on endless repeat. Once, around Halloween, we wired a pumpkin to the hood ornament. Woo hoo. Would have loved to be getting up to more mischief than that, but mischief was in short supply on the ground.

Here is a pic of one like it. You lifted up one of the tail lights to put gas in.

i think this is the space I need to write my story.  Please bear with me through it, dear reader.  It is painful for me to write, but write it I must.  For some odd reason, a personal journal does not fill my needs. I have never been good at journaling.  It feels too much like an obligation.  I need witnesses.

i married a dear, kind, wonderful, intelligent and funny man in 1975.  We waited to start our family for almost ten years because we were both the youngest children of our families, and we really thought that we should travel and study and grow up and enjoy a few years before we brought a child or two into the mix.  We did exactly that–maybe not as adventurous at traveling as some, but we did get to Europe, we did canoe on a few rivers and camp and endure the loss of my parents….certainly we came to know each other well and enjoy a life that we were committed to continuing that included children.  During that time I gained a graduate degree, we both worked full time, and we bought a house that included an acre of garden.  We grew blackberry bushes and added such perennial vegetables as asparagus and leeks, and learned that deer and crows would not allow us to grow corn and root crops of any kind.  Mother Earth News was our favorite publication and we devoured it when it arrived each month.  Dreams.

I don’t remember a time that I didn’t want children.  I’m told that since I was a tiny girl I played with baby dolls and later on, I babysat regularly for extra spending money.  I loved kids and longed for the day that our own baby or babies would lead us into our future.  This finally occurred in January of 1984 when our first son was born.  I felt so proud, naturally giving birth to a strapping 8 pound, 9 ounce baby boy whom we named Ian because his name would be in honor of my deceased father.

This boy, he was something!  Beautiful, healthy, bright, smart, watchful, alert, and later considerate, thoughtful, and also athletic which reminded me so much of my mother, who was also so athletic.  He even looked like her when he was young.  It was kind of creepy and wonderful at the same time.  Well, HE thought it was creepy, but I thought it was wonderful, as if I was given a second chance to see my Mom again.  He was such a gift in our lives!

He was a “gifted” kid, diagnosed at a young age and entered into the limited gifted program in his school.  He took his own intelligence seriously, and we tried to respect that while also giving him balance in his life with athletic outlets and humor and emotional support.  That last sentence sounds so stilted — and yet I cannot find a better way of saying it.  We did what every parent wants to do and we were fortunate to be able to provide it.

High school, sports, and college followed….and as he aged we grew increasingly worried.  It was so slow, so insidious….we allowed ourselves to think that he was okay, although we checked with him regularly.  But he was definitely NOT okay. He came home after four years, one class shy of a degree in Biology, as a different person.  It was then that we saw the mental illness that had probably been lurking–had surely been lurking–which we did not see and which he hid from us.  He hid it so, so well.

Seven years after this nightmare began, our beautiful son ended his life by suicide.  We were so fortunate to be in touch with him every day for the last three years of his life.  We got to see glimpses of the magnificent man he was, and could continue to be….  He had dreams of becoming an advocate for making better mental health policy.  He had so much to give this world, and yet an illness sidelined his—and our—best intentions.

There are few words to adequately describe the depths of panic and terror a parent feels when a child is in peril.  The feeling that culminates from that is called ‘numb’. Fewer still are the words when there is nothing that can be done, even when you know you have covered every base, called every person, talked until you have no breath left and still  it will never be enough.  I now understand the depth of feeling a parent of a dying child feels, such as one who has cancer that is incurable.  The only difference between that and our experience is that there are no compassionate doctors and nurses, support groups and 24 hour call lines.  I also understand the heights of hope against the odds.  Who knows?  Whatever you try next might help, and so you continue.

Our son died on May 30, 2016.  We got a call from a coroner’s office, asking us to come identify his body.  The detectives, officers and others with whom we spoke were far more compassionate and kind than anyone we had contact with prior to that.  I am grateful for them.

Today, I believe that I am through the worst of the panic and terror, although I still dream of my beautiful boy.  In my dreams, he smiles and laughs and wants to reach me and he does.  This grief thing, it feels as old as time and yet as new as sunrise….but beyond that, it feels familiar.  I have lost my parents and yet I believe that they are with me still.  I have lost my son but he continues to reach me.  There is hope.

Its just not as shiny and new as it seemed back in 1975.  But it’s there.