“You are only as happy as your saddest child.”
I simply had to find something to do with my anger…
One would think being the only person fully grasping exactly how serious and out of control the situation within our family had become would make things easier for me. And I was the one person my son Joel had chosen to vent his own viral anger upon. Along with my own rage, I was carrying an unbelievable mountain of stress. Stress so extreme, it was actually breaking down my body and putting me in constant, excruciating pain. My previously fit body shrunk to 99 pounds and I lost multiple discs in my neck and back, causing a condition of bone on bone, nerve pinching agony. This should have made getting Joel away from me by sending him to The Institute easier. After all, I had given literally years of my life doing everything I could possibly do to help my troubled son. I could do nothing more. This was the last chance for Joel. And in many ways, for me. I knew I was at the very end of my strength. But the Saturday morning we woke him at 6:00 in the morning and he departed for Montana, none of that mattered.
I thought I would die of sorrow… Or maybe I just wanted to. But I didn’t.
Instead I became very busy. I begin to spend around 4 hours a day coordinating every aspect of Joel’s life. I figured out how to be a High School Education Guidance Counselor; learning the requirements for Washington State and Montana to earn a High School Diploma so I could manage Joel’s education. And then there was his “psychiatric situation”. Joel was being sent to a physiatrist by The Institute who had never laid eyes on him. She worked with him by web-cam. But then to be fair, he had been misdiagnosed and was on a fist-full of medications when he arrived that merely made him so tired he could barely function, let alone do any school work. I remember this so-called psychiatrist calling me on my cell phone while I was at the grocery store and asking my advice about what changes she should make in Joel’s medications. And oddly enough, I knew the answers to her questions.
But most of all, I spent months trying to convince Joel’s appointed therapist that he was being completely snowed by my crafty, irresistibly charming son. Joel was far from “working hard on The Program”, which was what Don was always telling us. It actually took 5 months out of the very expensive 12 month program for Don to finally believe me. Perhaps that was because the clerk at the front desk who opened the mail was deciding, with good intentions, that my weekly allowance of letters to Joel were too angry and inflammatory and might cause him to commit suicide. It was part of this person’s job to read the letters and make a judgment call about the content. If they considered the letter to not be helpful, they were not to pass them on to the “inmate”, but were instructed to place them in the assigned therapist’s inbox for evaluation by the therapist. Unfortunately, Don was either not reading my letters, or he agreed with the front desk clerk. Since we had “Family Therapy” sessions over the phone once a week, one would have thought Don would have mentioned this situation to me… Oh well. For months, most of my letters, unbeknownst to me, or to Jonnie, were gathering dust in the inbox on Don’s desk. As I said, Joel was good at charmingly lying and, even though Don also worked as a therapist at the local juvy facility, Joel was probably the best King of Household Manipulation this man had ever encountered. Joel was good; but not good enough to fool Jonnie.
After 5 months passed, I began to notice that here and there in Joel’s one weekly allotted replies to our family’s letters, he would say something like, “I’m not sure why I didn’t get a letter from you this week, Mom. But that’s ok.” Not aware of the Mad Mom = Teenage Suicide policy, I could not figure out why Joel thought I wasn’t writing him at least one letter every week. True, I was slightly hacked off at that kid of mine. Along with my other Joel-marinated daily activities at the time, I was cleaning that horrendously filthy bedroom of his. It was filled with obscene junk no mother should ever have to know about her son – let alone touch it. So there I was; on my hands and knees wearing surgical gloves. I singlehandedly removed everything in that hell-hole of a room. Then I scrubbed the carpet, walls and moldy shutters. It was beyond disgusting. So yes, I was furious.
On the next phone call with Jonnie, I mentioned that Joel was telling me he wasn’t receiving a large portion of my letters. She seemed surprised and said in her soft, appealing Southern accent, “Not getting your letters, Patricia? (which was what she always called me). You write that boy good letters. Lemme check.” I could hear her set down the phone and shuffle across the room in what sounded like big fuzzy slippers. When she returned, she said, “Well I don’t know why, but there’s a big ole stack of letters from you in Don’s in-box. I’ll see that Joel gets these. And I’ll inform the folks at the front desk to stop holdin any of your letters back.” It wasn’t too much later when we received the news that Joel was finally graduating. I was finally going to hold my baby in my arms again.
When the long awaited time finally arrived, our little family traveled to a very remote town in Montana. We spent the night in a strange little B&B. I suppose it only existed to house the parents of The Institute’s graduates. I could not sleep at all that night. So I stayed up the entire night and talked with the other sleepless parents of these messed up kids. Not that our family doesn’t have it’s own dysfunctional issues and idiosyncrasies; but these people were flat out weird. It was no surprise that their kids were such a mess.
The morning slowly came. I was wearing the puffiness outfit I could come up with so Joel wouldn’t be able to notice how thin I had become. He was waiting by the door of the gathering room. He saw his father first–I suppose because the grass was tall and Steve is nearly 6′ 2″. Joel shouted out, “DAD!!” We all ran into each other’s arms. It was a moment beyond description. Then we went inside and it was time for the ceremony to begin. We took our seats–I sat between Heather and Steve. I was feeling like I was going to faint, when suddenly in breezed a gorgeous, voluptuous woman. She had a beautiful face, long think brown hair and a very shapely figure. As she entered the room, every eye was riveted upon her. It was Jonnie.
The first thing she did as her eyes swept the roomful of people, was to say, in her unmistakable sultry voice,”Which one of y’all is Patricia?” I sheepishly raised my hand. I had no idea why she asked. She looked at me and quickly walked toward me. When she reached my side, she simply leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Then she walked up to her podium and the ceremony began. I looked up and saw Joel looking at me. He had been in attendance at many, many graduations over the 9 month period he had spent at The Institute. Sitting there in the “loser” section, month after month watching other kids graduate. But he had never seen Jonnie do anything like that before. His face was beaming as he looked at the tiny, sickly, exhausted woman who was his Mom.
The one who Jonnie kissed.
