There is no chapter in the vintage Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare (one of the best-selling books of the 20th century) for what to do when you find yourself in the emergency room with your first-born child lying in a bed because he swallowed 50 pills at a park near your house and is now on a suicide watch.
He was 15-years-old, struggling with depression.
His 12-year-old brother found him.
I was leaving the parking lot of the Claremont Hotel in Oakland after attending my first all-day meeting with my new boss when my younger son Jon called and I hung up on him.
He called back shouting, “Mom, mom, mom don’t hang up. Chris took a bunch of pills. I called 911 what do I do now?”
"I'm on my way home."
As I pulled up to my house I saw a police car and an ambulance with the back doors open. I ran into my home where I found two police officers, three EMTs, and my 15-year-old son slumped over the sink throwing up while his brother stood nearby.
Furniture in my home had been moved around to make room for the gurney he was about to be strapped into and transported to the closest Emergency Room.
The officer was talking to me and I have no idea what he was trying to tell me because I'm in shock trying to take in what is happening in the kitchen that I left at 7 a.m. which is now filled with strangers in uniforms.
I told Jon he “did good” and gave him a hug. Asked him if he was okay? Asked him what happened?
He told me that Chris had come home from the park about a mile away and told him he had taken all his ‘happy pills,’ slang for his antidepressants.
The medic interrupted us and asked me what medication he took. "Prozac," I replied. He asked if I had the bottle so he could bring it with him to the ER. The pills were not in the cabinet where they were normally kept.
Jon, the police officer and I went upstairs to Chris’s room. A crumpled-up note was on the floor, next to the empty bottle of antidepressants. A few of the pills that were supposed to help him recover from depression, not send him in the other direction, were scattered on the floor. The note read:
50 Pills for 50 Reasons
For the lying
For the shame
For the embarrassment
For the hurt
For the inadequacy
For the lack of friends
For the bad grades
For the fighting
For the sadness
And so on…..
I gathered up the few remaining pills and put them back in the container and handed it to the cop. “Well, he didn’t take all of them at least.”
When I arrived to the hospital I was directed to a room in the emergency department with a security guard at the door, standing by to ensure nothing else happened because he's now a danger to himself.
“Why Chris, why?”
I don’t know was all he said.
He was transferred to another facility and put on a three-day hold, a 5150. (A 5150 refers to Section 5150 of the 1967 California Welfare and Institutions Code which says that a person in a mental health crisis can be detained for 72 hours for evaluation in a psychiatric facility.)
The 5150 would become very familiar to us over the next several years, along with the 5250 (a longer hold) and conservatorship, all of which accompanied escalating levels of crisis for Christopher.
Patients are often called ‘frequent flyers’ because in spite of these interventions, the patient is not really stabilized and the hold expires so they leave in a psychotic state or untreated in some instances, and the pattern repeats over and over again.
All things I came to know over the next several years.
How did we get here?
That is not an easy answer or one I probably don't even know.
What I do know is this was the defining, initial moment which set-off literally years of trying to navigate a complicated set of systems that don’t work well - a labyrinth with no exit.
At that time all we knew was our son was now a danger to himself. And, for my 15-year-old, the pain of life had become so bad that, in his mind, leaving this world was the only plausible option of choice.
That choice still makes me cry.
This incident was the first of many to come including other suicide attempts, years of treatments, hospitalizations, dozens of different medications, hundreds of medical appointments and meetings with therapists, doctors, and social workers which created a lengthy and extensive medical record that cannot ever capture the anxiety and heartbreak.
No parent ever expects your child and family would be part of this tribe, a club you would not willingly ever join. A club which replaces dreams of achievements, milestones and accomplishments with hospital stays, medications and treatments that don’t ever seem to really work.
Many years have now passed and I am grateful and relieved to say my son is presently stable.
The word presently is important and intentional. Stability is a place of respite where those of us on this journey park for as long as possible and learn to breathe again, all the while hoping it is a forever home. But, I am also honest about this space and know that it is a precipitous landing spot that is always subject to change.
For more than 17 years, I have been my son’s ‘person’ - his care manager, advocate, custodian, guardian and overseer as we navigated the trajectory of his illness through a complicated and fractured mental health system to find help, get help, and essentially, be helpful.
And, at the same time, be his mom.
It has been the most difficult thing I have experienced in my life, and I’ve lived through some very hard things.
Some parents can't make it through this journey with their child for a number of reasons I do not judge. I simply understand and sympathize.
Because it’s damned hard.
In addition to simply loving Christopher with all my heart, what drove me over the years was twofold: one, my anxiety to just keep him alive; and two, my view that the world does not need another drug-addicted, street-living, person. I made this human. In my mind it is my responsibility to ensure he functions in the world and even possibly thrives.
Sadly though, this does not always come to pass. There are so many tragic stories of loss and the inability to intervene with a person in time or effectively for a number of reasons including access to care, resources, social status and funding of basic scientific research in the area of mental health not to mention the severity of the disease itself.
The most difficult barrier to help, in my view, is actually part of the disease: many people who are experiencing a mental health crisis are unaware they are ill.
In their mind, all is well, thank you very much. In our minds, things are way, way not good.
This is one of the fundamental reasons many people with severe mental health disorders refuse medication. Why would someone who thinks they are not sick take medication for something they do not recognize they have – not to mention the significant side effects these meds bring?
It becomes a big problem when loved ones and medical professionals know that medication will address some symptoms of a disorder and an individual refuses to cooperate. And, the individual gets to decide in the majority of cases which, at its face, makes sense if you can factor out the anosognosia, a lack of insight.
Both sides of this dilemma are valid, complicated and the basis for a lot of agony, legislation and legal proceedings.
When this began, my son was 15 years old and a minor. I still had some form of control over his life at that point. And, honestly, I am a White privileged woman who has the ability to navigate in the world in ways that others do not.
It is a grace that I do not take lightly and one for which that I am admittedly, guiltily grateful. I know that this is not the lived experience for many others because I have booked many, many hours now in psych wards. When I see a young person on the street, I think that is someone’s child, and it could have been mine. So, in spite of great pain, a lot of frustration, anger, sadness and despair, I still consider us lucky.
For the first time in more than 17 years I am able to think about that day which has come to signify the beginning, and the many years that followed. Going back and re-examining those early days has been a cranial luxury item I could not afford because not only is it severely painful, it is somewhat unhelpful because since that first night in the hospital new challenges have continuously arisen which required significant attention in the present.
His younger brother Jon, now 30, and I talked about the day Christopher tried to kill himself for the first time in many years while on a three-hour car ride from Cancun to Bacalar, Mexico.
To his credit he was very willing to talk about it. We talked about the day and reconstructed the timeline and what happened. Jon told me that his brother’s suicide attempt wasn’t something that drove his daily life – at least not anymore. (I know it did when he was younger, even if he doesn’t remember that.) It shook us all, and became a backdrop to our daily lives - something we didn’t talk about consistently but was present, always.
Probably the most tragic part of this entire situation was how it changed each of our relationships' with Christopher who was now a patient, a problem, a puzzle to be solved: someone who was fragile and constantly at risk.
As things got progressively worse and problems escalated and seemed unsolvable, people in the family got worn out while Christopher also pulled away and retreated into himself.
For his step sisters and other family members, I imagine it was frightening and bewildering. To this day, they have no real relationship with him.
For his brother, traumatizing and unrecoverable.
For his parents and step-parents, unbelievable grief, regret, stress and deep sadness.
I fought against acceptance of his disease for a very long time. I really thought I could fix him. It’s embarrassing now to admit that because, in the end, acceptance is the only viable path. Railing against the world or trying to change people is very bad for one’s psyche and wholly unhelpful. I will say though there is a common belief, held by many, that this can be fixed – that mental illness is just a form of some personal weakness that a person should be able to just overcome. Not so much. In fact, not at all.
I grappled with guilt and regret for many years about what I might have done, or not done, or could have done, or should have done, or wish I’d done and so forth. It’s sort of natural I guess because as a parent, my responsibility is to protect him, to care for him and to be able to fix things for him. So, in my mind, I utterly failed him because this happened on my watch.
Christopher and I have established a functional working relationship over the years, as partners in managing his illness. This was not the case for many, many years. He effectively removed his father and other family members from his life over time through determination and will. He was a formidable fighter for his independence, even with raging symptoms. He is his mother’s son for sure. One psychiatrist called him the Tiger Woods of Bi-Polar disorder; he was that good at fighting treatment.
I too am a formidable fighter, especially for people I love and care about. I fought to hang in there with Chris even when it seemed hopeless and futile.
He has taught me so much over the years, and helped me to not be afraid of life being out of your personal control. I still struggle with this, but honestly, when a child attempts suicide, making sure they make the swim team or get into Cal is no longer your priority, obviously.
Chris has also taught me in the hardest ways possible (because I’m not the easiest person), that some things are not fixable - like the death of my husband, or the suicide attempt of my child, or my own sadness about both these things. There are no easy answers or solutions to transcend some of what we get in life’s shit sandwich.
So, unknowingly in 2008, I began my grief journey with my son that I am still working through and will probably accompany me forever, just like the death of my husband.
It turns out that grief is not just about death, though it's often characterized that way. It’s about loss.
We grieve many things, and often avoid talking about it because it’s hard and painful. But, Christopher taught me early on to be open with people about this struggle. It not only de-stigmatizes it but it conveys to people, yeah, it could happen to anyone so please be kind. After I lost my husband, I realized that the only way for me to find my way to the other side of grief about his death (or at least to a nearby off ramp) is right through the portal.
As I opened up to talk about my grief, resilience and even stupid, online dating, so have others. I have grieved with friends over a number of things: the loss of a breast to cancer; a cancer diagnosis and the end of a life you expected; the end of a marriage and the accompanying hopes and dreams for a future with someone you love; the loss of an in-tact family separated by divorce; the estrangement of a friend; the loss of mobility; the loss of a spouse to dementia; the loss of a job and career; the death of a beloved pet; parental loss and the phenomena of becoming an adult orphan; sibling loss shepherding in guilt and regret for things unsaid; and the death of a friend and the fragility of life.
So many stories. It has broken me open in unexpected ways and connected me to new and old friends who share, re-live or process awful, tragic parts of life. It's an honor and privilege to hear these stories and all I can do is just give people grace. Send them lots of love. Listen.
I shared some of my own story with a friend over dinner recently who reached out after reading my first blog and was personally struggling with the loss of someone very important to him in his life and lamenting he couldn’t grieve.
He said essentially he couldn't feel the feels and somehow that was leading him to feel even worse about the loss.
I get that.
But it also occurred to me that there is no one way to grieve, no universal experience of grief, and yet, grief is universal.
My friend, of course, is grieving. It’s just not showing up like most people expect with sadness and unwelcome, ugly crying at the grocery store.
But it's there. And what was profound, which he also shared that evening, is how this experience has changed, and continues to change, how he thinks about his life - how he relates to the world and what to do with his time and energy now and moving forward.
Maybe that’s the gift of grief.
Like with my son, husband, and my friend's dear friend and the number of other stories that have been shared with me, grief teaches us to focus on personal values and open us up to new ways of thinking - to live full-out while you are still here and make every second count.
Maybe grief and loss serve as a wake-up call for life, to take your best shot because you may not have a lot of game time left?
"What will you do with this one precious life," asked the famous poet Mary Oliver. It's a hell-of-a-way to learn a lesson but it does smack you in the face.
It's certainly one of the lessons of grief - to find a road that leads you to your life's purpose and core beliefs.
So, while I am not grateful for the losses I've experienced with Chris and my husband, I am working hard to be grateful for the lessons grief has taught me and continue to teach me.
And, I think if we can find those lessons, then grief, which people often say is the price of love, is probably worth it somehow.
If you know someone who is struggling with mental illness there are many resources now that are much better than 17 years ago. And while I am no expert, I have 'lived experiences' and resources to share. Message me (sfwidowgirl@gmail.com) and I am happy to help in any way I can. Also, this will likely be the only post about my son as it is his story to tell now, and to live. So, while he granted me permission to write about my perceptions, he felt strongly that I was not qualified or was it appropriate for me to write about his experiences. I fully respect and honor that.