At 18 months old
Still hard to write about this 3 months later but I just don’t know what to feel. Sometimes feel like there should be more emotion but just can’t call it up.
October 22: Got notified my oldest grandson had died. Whether accidental or on purpose, it was an overdose. He was an addict. Left several children wondering where their father has gone. He lived with us from 10 to 14 and he wasn’t a “bad” kid. Just torn between parents who didn’t seem to know how to parent.
November 1: Husband wakes me up from my nap (yes, I still take naps) to inform me that the police are here and need to talk to me. Holy shit, what the hell…5 cops, 3 inside 2 outside the door. I don’t have a clue as to what they wanted, or expected but they were there to inform me that my youngest was dead.
Turns out that Alabama, where he was living with his girlfriend for the last 11 years, doesn’t recognize ‘common-law’ marriages. His girlfriend couldn’t even choose the funeral home, order services of any kind or be involved in any way unless -I-, as next of kin, gave her permission. Behold the clusterfuck of that situation.
Now the dilemma. I hadn’t seen this child, who would have been 52 next month, in 30 years; hadn’t spoken to him in 25 when he threatened my life and cut off his dad for not divorcing me so he could come home. Sounds like we were terrible parents and I admit we didn’t always handle things well, but we did try. Reached out for help of all kinds; therapy…individual, group, family, in patient, clinics; lawyers…for charges of breaking and entering, almost causing a pregnant woman to have a miscarriage, peeping tom charges. Not to try to get him off but to try to find other help/punishment that would maybe have a chance of working. Nothing did.
He got worse, had kids that were taken away and later faced child molestation charges later dropped when mothers wouldn’t let their DAUGHTERS face trial against their father. (Yeah, it was that bad) And I almost threw up when I found he was working at the time as illustrator for a series of children’s books.
But now he’s dead and I’m sad looking at the pictures of him as a baby, as an engaging toddler and wondering why I can’t feel more than relief that he can’t hurt anyone else. In case you’re wondering, he died of the aftereffects of Covid, exacerbated by his refusal to even quit smoking.
sorry this has been so long. I wish I could stop having the pangs of guilt for not being devastated by the news. I wish I could feel like a normal mother losing her ‘baby’…the last child possible.