Goodbye Boy

As of this writing, I have six children (3 Stepchildren and 3 Bio Children) and one grandchild. They are the best thing I've done with my life. Maybe the only genuinely good things I've ever had even a minor hand in creating.

I was 19 years old when I met the three people who'd become my children. There was a lot of drama in the beginning from several different directions.

The first and most prominent was my future wife's soon to be ex-husband. He seemed to think he still had a say in what my wife didn't and did not do. Right up to and including dragging out their divorce (that I paid for) until my wife was eight months pregnant.
He was a bad husband, but he was a horrible father.

Don't get me wrong, I was shit father in the beginning, and I'm a barely passable father these days. I think most fathers, if they're honest with themselves, see themselves the same way I do. We try but in the end we have fucking clue what we are doing and make it up as we go along. We try but we fail more often than not. That's just the nature of the gig.

My wife's Ex thought he had all of the answers. I won't be going to go into the details of his background, the years he was married to my life or the way he treated my kids. What I will say is he left a lot of damage in his wake.

He was negligent.

He was mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive.

And when he was tired of them, he completely cut them out of his life.

So, what shape were my three oldest in when I met them?
My oldest son was angry. He'd had a difficult first eight years of his life and was just starting to realize things were different. It took a solid year and the birth of his little sister for him to start opening up and be happy. My youngest daughter has been and always will be her own person. She tested me but in a way that all four-year-olds test their parents. If anything, she was most mentally stable than anyone in the house, her mother and I included.

My middle son, Stephen, was a different story.

As a child he was angry, he was happy, he was lonely, and he was jealous. He wanted to be with his dad, and he hated him at the same time. He hated me, and he loved me in an alternating cycle of anger. He tormented his brother and sister until they developed the size and/or anger to fight back. He stole, he lied, she never finished a year of school after the fourth grade. He started drinking and taking drugs as a young teen. He was disobedient. He had multiple run-ins with the law as a minor.

He was, in a word, complicated.

Why am I telling you all of this about Stephen?

Nobody is perfect. We've all made mistakes, some of them so severe we hide them from our friends and family. I don't believe in whitewashing anything. The truth will set you free, and I am a firm believer in exposing the truth to the light of day and watching the darkness burn.

Once that's done, the healing can begin.

But there was another side to Stephen that diminished as he grew older but never disappeared no matter how bad things got. And they got horrible.

He was kind.

He was generous.

He was funny.

He was helpful.

He had a laugh that turned any situation into a moment of mirth.

He loved animals.

He loved his family.

He'd give you the shirt off of his back and the shoes off of his feet.
He was one of the most sensitive little boys I've ever met, and his childhood trauma permanently scared him.

But I choose to remember my boy.

Adult Stephen was a dark person. He still had his moment of shining goodness. He took care of his Grandmother in her home as she wasted away. I sometimes think her death was the thing that finally broke him.

But he had his other, aforementioned, side.

He was an alcoholic who used the bottle to self-medicate and fight his demons.

But I choose to remember my boy.
He was a drug addict who, in his own words, used the drugs to feel anything.

But I choose to remember my boy.

He spent months in county jail and state prison for drug-related offenses. He cycled in and out of a rehabilitation system designed to strip the government of money and didn't give a fuck about the people they were supposed to be helping.

But I choose to remember my boy.

He tried to get away from this area again and again, but he always came back. The allure of the criminal lifestyle he admitted over and over he loved, and the pull of his addiction always defeated him.

But I choose to remember my boy.

He had a mutually abusive marriage that did more damage to the two of them than good. Many were the nights where our house (they lived with us for two years before we kicked them out) was filled with the sounds of screams.

But I choose to remember my boy.

Many people who didn't know him saw that side of Stephen. When he was out with his "Friends" and frankly being the guy's people are afraid of when they saw him walking down the street, and they moved to the other side. But they didn't really know him because he would never let them.

I choose to remember my boy.

Yesterday, April 24, Stephen took his own life.

I don't know why he did it. I can guess, but I'll never really know. I know how he did it, but I will not talk about that outside of the family, or maybe not even then. I know where he did it, and it breaks my heart.

I'm sad, yes, but that's not all.

I feel guilt, and I feel anger.

I feel guilty because I know I could have been a better father, especially when he was young, and there was a better chance to help him. I'm mad because he didn't just do this to himself. He did this to his brothers and sisters. He did this to his grandparents, who always supported him. And most of all, he did this to his mother, my wife, a woman who never lost hops in him and now feels like she failed him.

But, despite that, I choose to remember my boy.

Tell the truth and shame the devil we'd been expecting something like this for years. There'd been too many trips to the ER after an overdose. There have been too many run-ins with the police or with gangs where he spent weeks healing.

So, we'd thought we were ready.

I can't speak from my wife, and I won't, but I assume my anger with him would bleed into any sadness, I thought my grief and would war with the blame I'd have for him. I thought I knew what would happen after the visit from the police or the call from the hospital.

That was such self-righteous bullshit.

I don't care what happened in the past. He never did anything to deserve what he got out of life. He's not the hero in his story, and he's not the villain either. He's just the victim of a world that never takes a second to give a fuck about anyone or anything that doesn't consider them people.

I don't see a selfish man.

I don't see a drug addict desperately fighting to stay clean.

I don't see the pretty criminal who was never made for that life.

I see the smile.

I hear the laugh.

I feel the generosity.

I remember my boy, not because I choose to but because that's what he is.

My son is dead, and I don't know how to go on.