I jumped with Alan's soft touch on my shoulder. "You okay? We need to hurry."
I nodded and finished getting dressed. As we settled in the hotel shuttle, my stomach was rock hard, worried that Kyle would start using heroin again because we were gone.
Wait a minute. I promised myself that I was only going to focus on my husband. Dammit! It’s our special day. We arrived late at the bus to Butchart Gardens, so Alan and I couldn't sit right next to each other. I forced myself to push away any worries and laid my hand on his shoulder. His warm hand covered mine. It felt good, and the gentle squeeze, comforting. This is the man I used to love, my handsome, brilliant, funny architect/ musician husband, but so much has happened these last few years my heart seemed to have forgotten.
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| Butchart Gardens |
As I sat by the window, I tried to focus on the lush scenery, but a rush of scenes of our 17-year-old daughter flood in, me finding out she was sneaking out to meet a man much older than her father or I would ever allow her to date at 17, her refusing to talk to us or come down to dinner without a lot of prodding which led to her father losing it and slugging her, something he had never done before. I was forced to take her out of the house for two months, two days before she turned 18, she secretly packed her backs and left. Finally, on the last day of school, I watched my daughter walk across the street as my students called out, "Have a nice summer, Miss B." Frozen, I watched my beautiful daughter enter into a huge white truck, and knew that I would not see her again for a long, long time. I felt frozen, but my brain kept telling me to yell out, I love you and hope you have a wonderful life. But I couldn't. My brain was overloaded; often, it felt like it was about to explode. I prayed, Please, God let Nicole be in a safe place where her boyfriend can help her heal and so she can be happy with someone who'll listen to her needs and help her feel safe. Please teach her to forgive two parents that were so brain dead from all the chaos with Kyle that we didn't see her needs. We didn't realize how closed down she had become.
I blinked a couple of times and snapped back into the van, reminding myself to relax and enjoy our special day. Things are better now. Kyle had just finished his court-mandated A.A. meetings, and we had encouraged him to continue with the meetings and find a sponsor. Now all he had left was his drug rehab and group counseling meetings at the hospital. Kyle had stopped staying overnight at his friends' homes and made sure he was home no later than 11. I was still drug testing him every once in a while, and he was back at school, taking a class, and doing well. In fact, he was excited because he finally realized that the math level needed to major in architecture was too difficult and stressful for him, so he had switched his major to history and minor in Physical Education. He had returned to the idea of teaching high school. Finally, his anti-depressants and Bi-polar/Schizophrenic meds were balanced, and I didn't have to remind him to take them or fight him on the need for them. I had stopped counting his meds. He returned to the jovial, joking Kyle, but now with confidence, we had never seen before. Everything had changed so much that I even stopped drug testing him.
I stared out the window forcing myself to focus on the landscape, but thoughts of Kyle kept popping into my head. I was angry with myself because I couldn't run away from worrying about our son. That day was supposed to be about us! Just us! But I had one more thing to do before I would allow myself to do that. I had promised myself that I would do long-distance Reiki, a natural healing modality, on Kyle that day and then no more worries. Immediately, I noticed something off. I didn't feel the usual little electrical shocks on my hands caused by his body's blockages. Oddly, there was nothing. Zero. What the hell, I thought. This had only happened twice before when I worked on a friend and my stepfather; their spirits had said to me it was time to let them go. They were ready to die.
My heartbeat was irregular for a few seconds. Could Kyle be using it right now? And then the staggering truth washed over me, and immediately I knew: … Oh, God, he's dead… I draw in a deep breath, struggling to slow down my hammering heart. No... this couldn't be. It must be all the alcohol still in my system, preventing me from pulling in the Reiki energy. Kyle is fine. I sat back and forced myself to look out the window at the scenery. The snow-covered mountains slowly helped me relax.
The sun had fully risen now, and the warm rays pierced through the conifers into my window. The quack... quack from my cell woke me from my daze. Instantly, in my heart, I knew our son was dead. This time I couldn't deny my intuition. For some reason, I didn't feel anything. Then, out of the blue, my son's voice bounced into my head, clear and intense, almost as if he was afraid. "I’m sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it.” In a panic, I struggled to find my phone in my bottomless purse, pushing my camera out of the way and then my wallet. Finally, I find it. Then everything seems to happen in slow motion. I recognize the voice of one of Kyle's close friends, Steve. He asked to speak to Alan. I tapped on Alan's shoulder and handed him the phone.
“It was an accident… an accident," Kyle stuttered while sobbing.
I know, I know, Kyle. I answered in my head. I struggled to focus on the people around me, but their blurry figures faded in and out. The bus was noisy, but I heard Alan asking questions about the cops. Everyone on the bus kept their eyes forward. They must have felt the urgency in the air even though Alan somehow stayed calm and collected. I sat in silence, waiting as Alan learned about our son's horrible demise. I was a prisoner in a gas chamber, fighting to stay conscious. My fear of losing our son had finally been realized. Blurry curtains of tears formed behind my eyelids, but the tears refused to fall. Why can't I cry? Why? Was it because I was all cried out?
Once Alan hung up, he turned around in his seat and told me what Steve had shared. I listened through a cloud of disbelief. We didn't care who could hear us. No one seemed to be talking anywhere on the bus as if they felt our loss.
Do I cry? No, not yet. That takes energy, and I had none. I felt my body falling deeper into the hole of oblivion, where there was no pain. Alan and I stumbled down the van's steps, holding onto each other's hands for support. I walked through the gardens as if I was inside a fishbowl, everything distorted. Sounds seemed to be buffered, and other times they seemed to echo. The famous gardens with trimmed hedges, fountains, and unusual flowers could barely be seen behind the panes of tears that no one could see. Alan and I walked around numb, not able to talk about much. There was so much blame: with each other, with Kyle's friends, but for some odd reason, we weren't mad at our son. Strange.
This was supposed to be a vacation to reconnect and think only about us. How could this have happened? What happened? Kyle was doing so well.
When we arrived home from Canada, Alan opened the front door, and I walked into the foyer of our house, set my luggage down, and took a deep breath. I turned around, “Alan, do you feel that?”
“What?” he asked.
I paused before answering, puzzled by the novel feeling. “The peace, do you feel the peace?” I swallowed back the tears.
Alan set down his suitcase and took a couple steps into the center of our foyer. He seemed to soak in the tranquility. Then he responded, “Yes, I do."
Our house had been in turmoil for so long that we had forgotten how that feeling felt like.
If you wish to write a personal message to me, my email is tbboivin8@gmail.com; I will attempt to respond in a couple of days.
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