Sometimes I Fail

Day 865.

I really thought I was getting somewhere. 
The past few weeks have been challenging. 

Adam had a very nasty car accident and magically came out unscathed, but it put George into a nasty revisit of his trauma, thinking for a few minutes that he had just witnessed Adam’s death. 
His Dad’s death. 
But we dealt with it, albeit in an extraordinary fashion, but we stayed close with the familiar reminder that death does sometimes- just strike.

I have this past month been digging in what we call the ‘stoge garden’, so named because it was Luke’s retreat to smoke cigarettes, often with me. I have now planted the long-planned rose garden with roses of considered breeds, both for their names marking Luke’s patriotism and our love.
Yes, I have been part of my new world. 
New, because I am eternally changed, as are we all. 

But tonight, I stayed up alone and watched the film Boy Erased, the story of Jared Eamon’s experience with conversion therapy.
To watch the betrayal of a gay boy in a cruel and unprotected facility, triggered all the pain of Luke in the wilderness and therapeutic boarding school. 
The confused and misguided parents doing what they thought was best, despite the Mother’s misgivings, brought it all back to me.
The goodbyes, the partings, the fear in Luke’s eyes, the hope, the anguish... 

I thought I was doing the right thing, but now with the reveal of all the corruption and abuse in rehabs, with what I now know about the Aspen Group into who’s care I place Luke, I am filled with doubt and regret, and I wish I could tell Luke. 
I wish I could tell him anything, all of the time, but now I wish I could tell him this.

Yes, we talked often of all that was wrong with the therapeutic boarding school.
And yes, we had a safe word. 
And yes, he believed that if he used it, I would come running and break him out
- because I would.

But he’d tell his friends that it would just put us back at the kitchen table trying to work out what to do next.

I only know of one alumnus who is sober.
I certainly know of many who are dead, and yes, he met Marlon there.

Were those rehabs no better than conversion therapy? Trying to convert drug-takers into not drug takers? What do you think Luke?

There’s so much of that time that I’ve yet to unravel.
So much regret.
So much pain.

Were those organizations just as fucked up as conversion therapy?

I did it to save his life.
...... Well, that went well!

So what should we do when our children fall to drugs?
What can we do once they realize they feel better on drugs than off them?
Do we really just stand by till they don’t?
I so want to find out.

I so want to prevent the pain that I bear from taking another Mother’s heart. 
Another brother’s heart.
Another father’s heart.

Because it takes our lives too and swerves everything onto another plane.

The words and emotions in my book are still true, they have not changed
All the emotions, all the pain, all the regret...
All that has happened in the past 865 days, is that I have learned to live with them better.
Like a marine who has to run with a 500-pound backpack, I have become accustomed to carrying the loss of my boy Luke.

But it would seem that in some moments I fail.