#021 Life Changes

The Good, The Bad, The Unthinkable

Many big life changes occurred between the 2017 Smokey Mountain hike and my next hike in 2019. Unable to etch out time for a 2018 section hike I turned my focus towards smaller events. I spent the autumn of 2017 and the winter of 2018 training for a trail marathon at Kentucky Lake (LBL), the spring and early summer training for a one-hundred sixty-mile bike ride across Indiana (RAIN), and the summer training for a Rugged Maniac obstacle course in Indiana and a Tough Mudder obstacle course in Tennessee.

Overlapping with these events were Becky graduating seminary in May, her ordination to the ministry of word and sacrament mid-June, our move into our apartment in North Carolina at the end of June, and Becky’s first sermon in her new church on the first day of July.

The night before she and I moved to North Carolina we went to my parent’s house for dinner. My son dropped in for a little while. We asked him once again to go with us in an attempt to separate him from troublesome path and people he’d chosen to follow. I offered to hire him to help me set up the new apartment, then he could ride back to Kentucky when I went back in mid-July if he wanted to, hoping that if he came with us to North Carolina that he’d like it there and not return to Kentucky for a long time. Again, he declined.

I went home to Kentucky a few times throughout the summer to tie up loose ends. I organized the trips to get the most work done for my power washing business on weekdays then participate in art shows, the R.A.I.N. Ride, the Rugged Maniac, and the Tough Mudder obstacle courses and on various weekends. I’d stay in our Henderson home to continue preparing it to be sold. My business sold in September. The house finally sold in December. All our financial ties to our home town were severed by the end of 2018.

Becky and I bought a new car as a graduation gift to her prior to her graduation ceremony in May. New degree, new career, new town, new life, it seemed fitting that she cruise around in a new ride.

We kept her other car. I offered it to My son for free if it would help him find and maintain a job. He said he didn’t want a hand-out. So instead of him buying the junky car he was looking at for five hundred dollars, then constantly be out money on top of money to keep it on the road, we agreed that he’d buy Becky’s car for the same amount, but pay for it when he had built up the money, or make twenty-dollar payments over time, or whatever he could afford to do. Either way, it wasn’t about the money. I was hoping it would help him find and maintain a job that would distract him from his other choices. He took the deal.

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There were so many moving parts in 2018 I don’t know how we got everything done. With all the events, work, graduation, business selling, moving, art shows, house selling, going away parties from our friends and families, setting up an apartment in a new state, helping her set up her office and other rooms in her new church, and a thousand other little loose ends all tied up in a nice neat little bow, with our new life developing in our new place, and a brand-new year about to unfold before us, you would think that we could let out a celebratory sigh of relief over all our planning and hard work coming to fruition.

But life doesn’t always work like that.

In fact, life had an unexpected kick in the gut to share with us.

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This next episode occurred nearly three years to the day prior to this post. I can still feel the effects of that day -

I had been sipping coffee on the balcony of our North Carolina apartment enjoying a beautiful October morning. I went inside to refill my cup when I saw my wife on the phone with a concerned look on her face. She began explaining to me what happened as she continued receiving information. The short version, and the version I’m telling out of respect my son’s privacy, is that he and one of his friends had played a life-altering game and had won a life-altering prize.

As I began processing the seriousness of his actions my mind and body went numb. My stomach felt as though rocks were churning inside. The dizzy feeling of falling downward and floating upward simultaneously fell upon me. Confusion, panic, worry, and a hundred other emotions set in simultaneously. All light around me began fading.

Then, as though I had bitten down hard into a live wire, every nerve in my body ignited into an electrified intensity as I launched into what I can now only describe as a weaving together of fight and flight modes. I wanted to run, but to where? I wanted to attack, but what?

As I learned more about the seriousness of these actions and the probable consequences. I realized he was well beyond our help.

Just a few moments prior I had the normal concerns of a normal adult floating around in the back of my mind but was otherwise enjoying life and the cool morning breeze, thinking about how I wanted to spend my day, three floors up, overlooking a park full of active people who were also enjoying the day. Now, an overload of serious complications had forced their way to the forefront of my whole existence leaving me dazed and confused, with something far more serious developing inside me, something that would most likely affect me the rest of my life.

I returned to the balcony to get some air. The beautiful October day had taken on a different aura, though nothing had changed but my perspective. The world, through my new eyes, through the filter of sorrow, now had a dark overarching presence to it, as though light had been inverted, converted to shadows, and shadows were perverted, inverted to black.

I began thinking about what he was going through that morning, his wellbeing, his mindset, his fears. I began to wonder what I could have done to prevent this. No, that that was the wrong question. The right question is what could he have done to prevent this? This is on him. What is done is done. I should not play the “what if” game with myself.  It is what it is. Everything was spinning around me.

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Note to reader:

I began this book (part of a four book series that my blog is based on) by writing a lot about my son’s situation in great detail; the effects of his decisions on himself, his consequences, and the affects on the family.

Though writing it all out in detail helped me tremendously in the healing process, I decided somewhere around the third draft not share the details of his personal issues.

Those are his stories to tell, not mine.

My story is about how his story damn near killed me, left me broken and scared, left me wandering in a wilderness of sorry, left me wondering if the deepest scars will ever heal, as new emotional cuts continued throughout the winter.

The words do not exist that accurately describe the level of helplessness you experience when watching your offspring destroying themselves with their own choices. So I’ll rely on the words that do exist, to the best of my vocabulary, to describe to you over the next few weeks the experience of surviving the darkness of a black winter.