My two miracles.
My raison de vivre.
Only by knowing where we’ve been and where we are now can we move in a different direction.
“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Verse Four Something Crazy-Bad
Verse Five More Than a Blip
Verse Six Mental Moonshine
Verse Seven Not My Son
Verse Eight Hate Me
Verse Nine Ghost of Joey Yet-to-Come
Verse Ten The Straw
PART TWO
Verse Eleven Green Frosting Giggles
PART THREE
Verse Twelve Crash
Verse Thirteen Smudgy Wall
Verse Fourteen Twenty-Five Nights
Verse Fifteen Awakening
Verse Sixteen The Elephant
PART FOUR
Verse Seventeen Patching the Hole
Verse Eighteen Down in My Heart to Stay
Rick, you’ve been a solid rock of love and encouragement. And Joe, our sons couldn’t have dreamed up a better dad. What has been so hard could have been so much harder.
Thanks to Jill Swenson at Swenson Book Development for pulling the best possible book out of me, and to Karen Gulliver, editor and dear friend, who kept me and my words in line. Many thanks to all the others who supported my efforts in getting this book to print: Adrienne Mandel, Antonio Pittarelli, Bonnie Beavers, Carol Blimline, Carol Silverman, Christine Khan-King, Cindy Khan, David Swenson, Derek Leebaert, Eugenio Villa Nueva, Heather Frank, Jennie Swenson, Joann Petrone, John Baudhuin, Julia de Valencia Duran, Julie Swenson-Magney, Kimberly Baker, Kim Straehla, Kitty Lilly, Laura Fitzpatrick, Laura Straehla, Laurie Ward, Lisa Kinn, Marcy Silbert, Margaret Erickson, Melissa Ford, Pat Williams, Rebecca Daughtery, Richard Swenson III, Richard Swenson, Jr., Robin Delgado, Sara Irani, Sue Swenson-Hoyos, Susan Portmann, and all the gals from my delightfully discerning book group: Ava Kuo, Eileen Craig, Karen Gulliver, Lisa Krim, Mindy Weinstein, and Stephanie Proestal.
And many thanks to Central Recovery Press and my warm and wonderful editor, Helen O’Reilly, for the support and the faith and for giving my words a chance to be heard.
Today Joey returns to the place where his life began.
On a stretcher.
Cruising down the coastal highway in a four-door sedan at fifty mph, Joey slammed into an SUV, a line of mailboxes, and a stone wall—no brake marks—before bouncing into oncoming traffic. He arrived here in an ambulance, bloodied and unresponsive, with enough alcohol in his bloodstream to kill him. If his internal injuries don’t kill him first.
Twenty years, five months, and six days ago Joey tumbled into my world at this very hospital, Brevard County Medical Center in Melbourne, Florida. We greeted each other, this baby and me, but we already knew each other. We were already in love. He nestled in where he belonged, close to the heart he hugged for nine months, and into the arms whose most important purpose was now to protect, care for, and love. My heart, my arms, my son.
I can’t hold Joey in my arms this time. He’s too wrecked all over. Too battered, bruised, and scraped. I’m afraid of hurting him, but my longing to touch Joey is greater than my fear. I find a small spot on his blood-crusted forehead where it seems safe to place a soft kiss, and I hold onto his cold, limp hand. He is so pale. So gray. So still. The only sound is the dirge of whirs and beeps and gurgles—the sucking and trickling of life’s juices through a tangle of tubes and mechanical attachments.
And the whimpering.
I think the whimpering is me.
Joey fills the entire bed—the six-foot length of his body sags down the elevated slope, his legs all crumpled and akimbo at the bottom. His hospital gown reveals he is more bone than meat. Joey’s hands and feet, like a puppy’s paws, don’t fit the rest of him. But Joey’s not as thin as the last time I saw him, several months ago. Back when I told him it hurt more for me to hang on than to let go. Back when I told him I was done trying to help him until he was ready.
This is not what I thought “ready” would look like.
Joey does not move, not the tiniest bit, other than the mechanical expansion of his chest. He doesn’t know I’m here, but still, I talk. I want to reach the part of him imprisoned for so many years. Maybe I can slip past the wily warden of addiction and touch Joey while he’s unconscious. I tell Joey I love him bigger than the moon, that I flew here as quickly as I could, and that his dad’s plane will land soon.
“Joey, you were in a car accident. No one else was injured.” And then I lie. “Things will be better now.”
I cannot breathe. I pray for more time.
Sitting at his side, I pat Joey’s stiff and bloodied hair. Golden locks I’ve washed a thousand times between bubbles and boats. I no longer see the addict my son has become—a person I no longer know at all. Instead I see my little boy, snug in his innocence, transposed over this wounded, lifeless man-face. I see the glow of his smooth cheeks peeping out from under rumpled covers as I stand over his small bed late at night. A sob escapes me as I remember the little boy with the sticky giggle who one long-ago day asked me to sing him his special song.
