On this journey of grief, some of us take a longer amount of time, some
less, and some never get to where they are going at all. GriefNet is a
testament to the survival spirit of some wonderful human beings who helped
me during those dark, first months. I listened to people who were ahead of
me in the grief journey telling me that things would get better. And they did.
This is not, of course, discounting my dark days.
I am not the same human being I was. I look at life differently. I view
my own spirituality differently. I view my son’s life and his soul growth
differently. I hope that one day I can celebrate his life, more, instead of
mourning his passing. But, along the way I must be kind to the most
important piece of the puzzle of my life—-me. Everywhere I look I see
advertisements for drug reform or stories about drugs and drug addicts.
Everyone thinks that it won’t happen to him. I thought so too. I can
remember breathing a sigh of relief when I got both children out of high
school without incident. Ironically, Aram’s drug usage started later.

THE AFTERMATH
During the last two years of Aram’s life, my friend told me that she
never saw me smile. I was worried sick over him. I was always waiting for
the phone call that would tell me he was dead. I played the scene over and
over again in my head thinking I was preparing myself for the actuality.
WRONG! I had inherited a dry sense of humor but no longer found humor
in anything.
I am one of those people who save everything. I saved all the cards that
the kids made for me or gave me. I found a note dated 1980 in which Aram
promised to try harder to be better. I just couldn’t seem to reach him. Never.
I took him to a child psychiatrist when he was about seven after receiving a
call from his school saying that he was crying inconsolably. I went to the
school and found him laying on a cot. He refused to talk to me or even look
at me. There was really no diagnosis. He was asked to draw a picture. He
drew a boat in the water and in the boat were Aram and his father. In the
drawing, Aram was just a miniature version of his father. He never believed
that his father loved him. But he did.
There are some places I cannot even go to in my thought. I miss Aram
so much. I try to let only a little of that feeling in at one time. I remind
myself what he was like at the end. But that was not my son. The years of
addiction had taken their toll, physically and mentally. He was a sick man
and he knew it. I tried it all. I tried tough love but I was never tough enough.
I tried therapy. I tried Al Anon. I was on a prayer line. I had a Mass said to cleanse my ancestry of any addictions. Nothing worked. If I myself could have it fixed, it would have been fixed. The hardest lesson of all was the realization that I had to let go and let Aram find the solution himself. He had to be the one to do it. But he couldn’t.
My daughter suffered so much, during this time, because I was unable to
give her the attention she needed. I felt that she needed too much from me.
Once during this period I told my husband, Garo, that I never should have
had children. I was so down. This nightmare we all suffer through affects
our remaining children, indeed our whole families. It makes me question
every little thing I have ever done as a parent. Some days I don’t like myself
very much.