My Remarks on the Passing of My Son Maxwell

My son, Maxwell Defiance Landbeck, was killed early the morning of July 13, 2014.  I’ve written about Max before, about our troubles.  This post is my effort to make sense of his death.  To find personal context and peace with it, to see the meaning in our loss and grief.  It is comprised mostly of the remarks I gave at his memorial service, though I've included a few passages from the eulogy his sister read (the entire eulogy is here).

    “Grief is the natural by-product of love. One cannot selflessly love another person and not grieve at their suffering or death. The only way to avoid grief would be to not experience the love; and it is the love that gives life its richness and meaning.”

A little over two years ago, Max was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.  In the months prior to that, he struggled with substance abuse.  It is now obvious he was self-medicating.  The burden of bi-polar disorder is swinging between depressive and manic episodes. For Max, when he was Manic, he would become delusional. Delusions of different realities, grandiose visions and fantasies. He was never violent, but pursued his bizarre notions no matter how strange or dangerous.

When Max would use drugs, even marijuana, he became even more delusional.  But he sought out bizarre drugs, custom hallucinogens, spice, gleefully experimenting with substances that were not technically illegal.  During these years, family and friends tried to help him, offering him a place to live if he promised to quit for good. Max was easy to love, but difficult to live with.  Addiction is a terrible burden. He could not resist the draw of trying drugs one more time. Each time Max was certain that it would help.  Each time he was terribly wrong.

In the very early morning of Sunday, July 13 Max was struck by a freight train and killed instantly.

In the days since Maxwell’s death, when I would share the story of how he died, sympathetic listeners would sometimes ask, “Why?”  I am sure they wanted me to know that their thoughts are with us as we struggle to understand what happened.  But I also suspect that they want to know who to blame.  They want to know who *we* blame.

Did we blame the people who gave him drugs?  Did we blame him?  Or the train?  Did we think he was suicidal or delusional?

I need to explain something important, and to do it, I am going to tell a story about Max and me.  A frequent conflict we had was about blame.  Specifically, fault; as in, whose fault something was.  Who to blame?  Whenever something happened, and Max was involved, he’d acknowledge that he shared *SOME* of the blame.  But he would insist, with prosecutorial certainty, that since it wasn't *ALL* his fault, it could therefore not be proven that it was *ANY* of his fault.  Even as a first grader, he already had an intuitive grasp of contributory negligence as a factor in sentencing.

I am certain that Max was wrong about that.  This vision of fault or blame, it’s not true.  It’s a distraction, a feint to excuse yourself from accepting your portion of the blame.  With Max, I came up with a metaphor to teach him my concept of blame or fault; it’s what I call the "Pie" theory of blame.  P-I-E, not mathematical pi.

When something bad happens, the fault for it can be divided into pieces, sometimes into dozens of slices.  As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter how many other people or factors are involved, it doesn’t matter how big those “slices” are relative to each other.  Every piece of the pie, every slice, they are *all* responsible. It’s not just the biggest slice of the pie. I wanted Max to understand and take responsibility for each choice he made, however complex the motivation behind those choices, no matter how contributing the circumstances around his choices.

And I understand that as people, we have an instinctive desire to reduce things to a single cause or a single concept, a lowest common denominator.  It is easier to feel like we are in control, like our efforts can affect the outcome, if we are fighting *one* thing.  It is especially comforting if we can affix the blame to some external force, some other person.  But life is complex.  Individual people are complex.  If we could see ourselves with complete honesty and accuracy, we would see that each of our choices is prompted by many, sometimes dozens of different motives. Sometimes our own motives conflict with other motives!  Trying to narrow the cause to one thing is impossible.

My point is that we get lost on the cause, the slices, how the pie divides up.  We lose sight of the consequence of action when we focus on the cause of action.  “Cause” is an equation we can almost never solve.  We are ultimately the sum of our choices, NOT the things that motivate our choices.

So instead of focusing on the why of his death, looking for someone to blame, we've looked instead at the consequences.  Max's death is many things at once.  It was the tragic end of a troubled life.  It was the result of mental illness. It was the byproduct of profound dysfunction resulting from drug abuse.  But his life is also many things, many of them great successes.  He repeatedly triumphed over the despair of relapse, trying again and again to stay sober.  He used his native gift for music and singing to bring joy to hundreds of people this year alone, thousands over the course of his life.  He loved his family, and he was loved by us.

For the rest of my remarks to make sense, it’s important that you understand a couple of my fundamental beliefs.  I believe in God.  I know that each person existed spiritually before they were born.  That belief isn’t just a metaphor that seeks to mystically capture the connectedness of us all, it is very literal.  I know that God is a real being, a literal spiritual father to all of us on the earth.  I know that we all existed spiritually before coming to the earth, and that we are here, on the earth, on purpose.

Anyone that knows me personally knows that I am very committed to the civic process of allowing all to believe whatever they believe. I talk often about the civic distance, the polite fiction of a space where everyone might be right, everyone might be wrong.  I’m going to set aside that buffer and not use my usual caveats.  I need you read this like everything I am saying is the Truth.

 Like I said, I know God is real.  And we are on the earth on purpose.  We are here to:

*get a body

*make and keep covenants with God

*make choices with imperfect knowledge and total freedom, earning the consequences (both immediate and eternal) of those choices

*form and nurture relationships that will last into eternity

If you were born, that’s the “get a body” part.  For Max, purpose one has been met, another way that Max’s life can be viewed as a success; he was, like all of you are, HERE; he got a body!  But like I said, I see Max’s life as both success and failure.  A jumble of both.

I think most of us acknowledge that "jumbled" nature of our life.  We succeed and fail.  But just like with Max’s death, I think most people want to know *WHY* we fail.  Why do we make mistakes, why do we do wrong?

All the causes can be neatly divided into two categories.  First there are personal flaws.  Our weakness can hobble us in succeeding.  We have to strive to overcome our own selfish, or proud, or lazy nature.  But second, we also have to bear the temptations of an adversary, Satan. There is a popular image in our culture of the devil being some kind of honorable opponent, a gentleman with whom we can bargain, even outsmart.  That’s not true.  He has no rules.  He wants us to fail, and that’s *all* he wants.

Of the four earthly purposes I listed, any of those purposes that Satan thwarts, he counts as a victory.  When he separates us from our families, when we disobey, when he fosters disbelief, or when he causes us to despair and do nothing, those are all victories for Satan.

So, which is it, weakness or Satan, that make us fail?  Which was it with Max?  Was it temptation or personal flaws?  I have to be plain, it doesn’t matter why we fail.  It doesn’t matter why we go awry.  It doesn't matter why Max failed, why he stepped in front of that train.  As far as I can discern, in all of our failures, BOTH things are present, weakness and temptation.  So, like with fault, it doesn’t matter which “slice” is bigger.  I think when we got lost in the argument, that’s another way Satan wins.  We get so caught up in trying to figure out who to blame, we stop taking responsibility for our choices and stop trying to be good.

Because what matters is how we act and what we choose.  We have the power to shrug off both temptation and weakness.  One of the great blessings of this life that we have is agency, the power we have to make choices.  And the sum of Max’s choices in life is that he is gone.  I can’t tell you if it was the drugs or his bi-polar disorder.  I don't know if he meant to hurt himself, or if he was delusional.  We’re never going to know the answer to that question here.

But the time he had on the earth to make choices, to learn, and to live with us, and to love us is over.

Now I know Max’s spirit still exists.  All of his memories his experience, his personality, charm, playfulness, talent, quirks, the things that made him loveable, the things that made him maddening, that’s still there.  Max is still “alive”.

But one of the purposes of our earth–life is for us to form and PERFECT relationships that will last into eternity.  Lucy Mack Smith said, “We must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another, and gain instruction that we may all sit down in heaven together.” It takes a lifetime to hammer out a relationship with someone else that can last into the eternities.  And for now, Max is lost to us.

When my doorbell rang, I knew it was bad news about Max.  I quickly came to realize that I had a responsibility to explain his life and death, to give context for what both mean.  I am pleading with you, with all the urgent grief of a bereaved parent, to learn the lessons of my and Maxwell’s life.

I want you listen to four things now.

Number one; don’t use drugs or alcohol.  Ever.  Don’t read this and smugly shrug off the histrionics of another "Just Say No" parent lecture.  Don't think to yourself that you have an exception, a good reason, a new study, or a new law. I want to be the unequivocal voice in your ear for the rest of your life, drugs are bad. Period.  When you use, you thwart a purpose for being on the earth.  It distances you from the people who love you, it distances you from the people that you love.  It impedes your ability to choose, to act, and to serve.  It dulls your faculties.  It harms the body that you have been blessed with.  It harms you. I’m begging you now to stop it.  That there is time, we are all still here.  Stop it, and make the world a better place.  Make yourself better.  If you’ve been trying to quit, keep trying.  If you’ve relapsed, quit again!

Now, that was a pretty heavy lecture that's obviously about Max and his choices.  Number two is entirely about my failing.  Avoid contention.  I consider it one of the great failures of my adult life that, especially with my son Max, I often allowed my certainty to lead me to verbal hostility when I'm right.  It is inevitable that each of us will be right about something, and then be confronted by someone else who is COMPLETELY wrong.  It is tempting to demand, "What were you thinking?!" or, "How many times have I told you?!" in such situations.  I hope it is obvious I am describing the conflict I had with Max; I was right, and he was completely wrong.  He was SO wrong about his choices, that it killed him.  But I can testify in hindsight, that my self-righteousness, my unswerving and indignant reciting of standards I knew would keep Max safe, did no good.  It put distance between us.  My certainty that he was wrong did not excuse the anger, and the hostility, and the contention that I created.  I am grateful that my wife taught me this lesson in recent years, that peaceful love is a better response to disobedience.  I was working on this with Max, trying to rebuild, trying to be less critical.  It is possible to have an absolute moral standard, and NOT be angry.  I lost YEARS of time with Max, just arguing with him, and yes, he loved arguing.   But just like I wouldn’t let Max redirect the blame to others, I cannot shift the blame for this failure.  *I* engaged every single time he threw down that gauntlet.  So I challenge you, when confronted with conflicts, especially within your family, state matter-of-factly your standard, gently ask kind-hearted questions, and act with compassion when your loved ones choose the wrong thing.

The third thing, and this is important, is do not despair.  Despair is a tool of the adversary, whether you believe in Satan or the thermodynamic concept of entropy.  Especially do not despair to suicide.  Whatever you’ve done wrong, whatever horrors you’ve experienced, whatever failures or burdens you carry, whatever burdens you have set upon other people, no matter what they are, I can promise you; you need to be here.  You must keep trying.  You must keep acting.  If you ever doubt that, if you ever reach that point where you feel there is nothing left, you call me.  And I will find you, and I will give you the relentless hug that I can’t give my son.

The fourth thing I want to leave you with is the challenge to seek the will of God, and obey it.  The great burden of choice in this life is that you will fail, and fail often, and you will be held accountable for each of those failures.  But the great gift of mortal life is that you can try again. And again.  And again.  You can be forgiven.  No matter how wrong you have been, you are still alive, and you must try again to be right.

I ask that you look to Max as both an example to be emulated, and an object lesson of what happens when you make the mistakes he made.  He failed, and he succeeded.  For all of us, every day is both failure and success, both things at once. We fail, because we do not achieve the standard of goodness or perfection that God instructs. But we are also victorious, because we keep trying again no matter how many times we fail.  In trying, we conquer evil, we conquer temptation, and our own weakness.

Do not be discouraged by your own failings.  Find courage and motivation in the fact that Max succeeded *and* failed.  Keep trying.  Be more obedient to God’s will, seek earnestly to know it.  Turn away from the despair that threatens to engulf you.  Seek a more peaceful path with those around you.  And be sober.

As a favor to me and my family, I would ask is that if you have a moment of success, where one of those things happens, where you avoid an argument, where you choose life, you choose sobriety, please share that story with me.  Every time someone shares something with me about Max, every time I can talk a little about him, I’m pursuing my relationship with him.  He might be gone, but I am still here, and I can still make myself better, love him better.

I know that I’ve made the covenants that will allow Max to be my son forever.  My life’s pursuit from here out is to live worthy of those covenants so I can be with him and his brothers and sisters, and my wife.  I know what I am saying is true.  And it’s not just a reflexive response to grief.  I knew these things were true before anything happened to Max. 

Thank you for your attention, your thoughts, and your prayers on our behalf.  We have been comforted and strengthened by it.

I miss him.  I love him.  We are going to be OK.

Maxwell's Eulogy

Eulogy for Maxwell Defiance Landbeck

July 25, 1993 - July 13, 2014

Read at his memorial service, July 25, 2014 by his sister, Emmalyn Landbeck Ritchie,

In 1993, Maxwell Defiance Landbeck was born to Jennilyn Babcock Landbeck and John Stewart Landbeck, III, Brigham Young University students.  Their graduation pictures include him as a 3 week-old baby in their arms.  

The first thing you need to know about Max is that he barged his way into our family.  Our parents were earnest about being parents. They were willing to have many children, but purposefully intended to have five kids, spaced out relatively evenly.  Stewart and I were almost exactly two years apart, so it was a huge indignant shock that Jennilyn found herself pregnant again, with Max, only seven months after baby # 2.

We believe that each person existed as a spirit before they were born. Coming to earth to be part of a family is an important part of God’s Plan for each of us.  We don’t know how families come together or the whys of timing. His parents know that Max belonged in our family and that he picked us specifically, knowing what mortality held for him. He knew the difficulties he would encounter, and chose to come anyway.

If Max picked his parents, they at least got to pick his birthday:  Concerned with how big he was getting, the doctor suggested he should be induced a week early.  July 24^th is Pioneer Day, a BIG Utah holiday to honor the Mormon Pioneers. Mom wanted to see the parades and fireworks. And honestly, she didn't want to miss her extended family at a big fish fry that afternoon, either.  So July 25th was chosen. 

Maxwell Defiance Landbeck was born in Payson, Utah, at Mountain View Hospital.  He was a healthy 9 lbs 9 1/2 ounces, 21 1/2 inches. He had long, silky white blond hair.  Max grew to 6 feet 1 inch, 217 lbs. with dark hair and a reddish blond beard.

His initials spelled out MDL, which he thought was hilarious, since he was one of the middle children, surrounded by siblings:  older sister Emmalyn and brother Stewart; younger siblings Suzanna, Samuel, and Roxie. 

Max loved word games and wordplay. He insisted that his Dentist Appointments be scheduled for 2:30. (Point to teeth)  Tooth.  Hurty.

Everyone asks about his name:  His older brother inherited John Stewart Landbeck IV, a strong name.  So, what do you name the 2nd born son?  The name Maxwell comes from Mormon Apostle Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a firm and eloquent speaker his parents admired. Maxwell was also the first name of one of John's favorite missionary companions.

In the 1800's people named children for characteristics the parents hoped the child would emulate.  Charity, Providence, Faith, and so on.  The middle name Defiance comes from the notion of defying expectations, defying wicked or evil influence.  From Genesis:  "For God having sworn that every one ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood should have power, by faith, to break mountains, to divide the seas, to dry up the waters, to turn them out of the their course: To put at Defiance the armies of nations, to divide the earth, to break every band, to stand in the presence of God; to do all things according to his will, according to his command…and this by the will of the Son of God which was from before the foundation of the world.”

In Max’s baby blessing his Dad said:  "We give him a blessing that he will understand what his name means; that the things he should defy in this world, are those things which are ungodly, those things which pretend to be true but are not…"

Before he was a year old his family moved from Utah to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Max attended pre-K through second grade in Meadowvale Elementary, exactly ten steps from his front door.  After we moved to Forest Hill, in fourth grade Max had to pick a music-related class. With characteristic stubbornness Max resisted all options that involved home practice. So, chorus it was!

Max was contrary and Max was charming.  Once, in a church children’s class taught by his Aunt Sara, he crossed the line once too often by refusing to stay in his seat.  His Aunt gently threatened to take him out and let his Dad punish him.  Without slowing down, Max crossed the room, took his Aunt’s face in his six-year old hands, and crooned, “Oh Auntie Sara, I just wanted to get a closer look at your beautiful blue eyes.”

School boundaries changed and Max was shifted back and forth from North Harford to Southampton Middle School three times in three years. Max’s Southampton choral teacher, Mrs. Louise Ballard, noted his talent for singing, and recommended he audition for the Maryland State Boychoir.

Mom drove him down to an audition in Baltimore one Saturday in the Fall of 2006.  Max protested nervously all the way that he didn't want to do this, getting angrier and more nervous right up until he walked through the audition doors.  He sang "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and after that the hymn was his go-to audition piece.

Max was awarded a position in the Tour Choir, for his beautiful tenor voice.  To his great consternation, he was almost immediately required to perform with them on a local TV special.  Our family still has it saved on a TiVo.

Julia Mattson, a fellow MSB mom said, "He spent a third of his life with the choir.  I remember talking with Max about Boychoir and seeing his face light up saying ‘I love those guys-they're some of the best people I've ever known-and I know I am a better person for being a part of it.’"  As his voice got deeper and deeper into the bass range, he moved into the Changed Voice Choir. 

His family moved to Aberdeen where Max graduated with the class of 2011. 

He toured China with the Deer Creek Chorale, and travelled to Bermuda, Canada, and dozens of American States with the Maryland State Boychoir.  He sang with his school, All-County and All-state choirs.  In college, Max sang with the BYU Men’s Chorus.  He performed on-stage at Aberdeen High School as Daddy Warbucks in Annie. He shaved his head for months and practiced looking boorish and rich. He did not need to practice the soft heart. 

Max was proud of his work with the Harford Community College Phoenix Theater in “Evita,” and especially proud of his recent part in the barbershop quartet in “The Music Man.”

Max broke more things than most teen-aged boys.  He broke every bike he ever rode.  And not just snapping off reflectors, Max crashed into trees, cracked axles, bent handles.  He melted the blade on one of Mom’s favorite kitchen knives trying to pry something out of an electric socket.  He broke a friend’s van door, trying to make it close faster.  Once, he broke a ceramic dish while doing the dishes, and carefully cleaned up all the broken pieces. Unfortunately Dad emptied that bag of garbage, a piece stuck out and sliced Dad’s middle finger and hand, leading to a dozen stitches. 

He became notorious for things breaking, sometimes just by being nearby. He leaned against a wall in the building where the Boychoir practices, and a section of plaster fell down.  Max was holding a hamster and the tail fell off! After that the Konstans did not let Max touch any of their pets. Max loved animals.

Maxwell had a scoundrel’s sense of adventure, but was an absolutely terrible liar. He never got away with anything. Max once successfully snuck fireworks into our house and then (air quotes) “accidentally” lit them in our basement. In. His. Hands. This lead to not just the first but also the second of many emergency room visits.

When told he was not allowed to eat food in his room, he snuck some down anyway.  Max brought an entire yellow onion downstairs, which he ate like an apple, and was caught by his obvious onion breath.

Once, Dad refused to buy him a particular candy. Later, when he was caught eating the candy, Max insisted that a boy choir friend (whose name he immediately forgot) just happened to give him that *exact* candy.

Max loved to play. He tried cross county running team, for a day.  Tried wrestling like his older brother, for exactly one day. But quit when he threw up after his first match.

He was however a champion Rubik’s-Cube puzzle solver.  He could twist and turn and consistently finish the puzzle in under two minutes.  Once he stood on stage with Emily Perry Canady to demonstrate their solving skills.  Then, as the music swelled, they gracefully traded cubes by tossing them to each other.  Max won the contest, but it’s likely because Emily had thoughtfully oiled her cube so it would spin easily, while Max’s was terribly gummy and tough to turn.

Max would never characterize himself as “lazy” but rather as “efficient.”  Why should he fold and put away clean laundry, when it works perfectly well to leave it in the basket, and wear it from there?

He was always the last one to show up. If HE was early, then he would waste HIS time waiting for everyone else.  During the months leading up to the performance of “The Music Man” the quartet was nicknamed “Where’s Max?” because when it was time to practice, they had to track Max down.

He could be very childlike. He loved little kids, jumping on the trampoline with them, watching movies with them, making funny voices with them.

Max loved to fish with his Grandpa Landbeck.  Max loved high adventure with the scouts. Once instead of riding his bike he was TOWED on a broken bike.

He liked audio books better than hard copies. 

Max learned to make homemade granola, and cinnamon rolls.  He learned how to make homemade spaghetti sauce, which he regretted, as he became the family’s official spaghetti maker.

It was hard to take pictures of Max. He would play to the camera with funny faces. But ironically, Max insisted that he hated to do solos. The solos we have of him singing are precious. We are grateful that he sang "Martha" by Tom Waits accompanied by Jeremy Harvey at a church talent show, and “When You Say Nothing at All” in his freshman year at North Harford. Even if getting him to do these solos took some convincing. We are incredibly grateful for the footage we have of him singing from “The Music Man” and love that he would turn and sing right to the camera.

Maxwell loved to argue, loved to be right.  He was happy to debate anyone about anything. He would do anything to keep the argument going, switch subjects, make up facts, and demand proof of others. 

He always had poor impulse control, which made him both likely to break things, and liable to be the first to volunteer whenever someone needed help.  He helped move a million people in and out of their homes as part of the Landbeck muscle men. He helped Daryl Leonetti decorate Havre de Grace and Aberdeen for Christmas, and entertained dozens of people by wearing his “Blue Man Suit” on Halloween.

For any who don’t know, a little over three years ago, Max was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.  In the previous year, he had begun to struggle with substance abuse.  It is now obvious he was self-medicating.  The burden of bi-polar disorder is swinging between depressive and manic episodes. 

For Max, when he was Manic, he would become delusional. Delusions of a different realities with grandiose visions and fantasies. He was never violent, but pursued the bizarre notions that would occur to him, no matter how strange or dangerous.

When Max would use drugs, any drugs, he became even more delusional.  Many friends and family tried to help him. Max was easy to love, but difficult to live with.  Addiction is a terrible burden. He could not resist the draw of trying drugs one more time. Each time Max was certain that it would help.  Each time he was terribly wrong. He spent many months living in a sober half-way house, where he hoped to be able to eliminate the drug-use from the equation.  

This year, it seemed his effort was beginning to succeed.  He was admitted to a residential treatment program where he could concentrate on both sobriety and mental stability.  Maxwell was sober for most of 2014, earning his four month coin and relapsing only once. He navigated the demanding practice schedule for performing in “The Music Man,” something he was immensely proud of, and we were too.

The day before Max died, Saturday July 12, was his little sister’s birthday.  He spent the afternoon at our family’s home, with his Grandparents and Great-grandma Billie.  He had cake, sang “Happy Birthday” with our second verse. Max hugged and kissed everyone, saying “I love you” just like he always did. He teased his little sister until he got scolded for poking her.  He had plans to join Mom at a Boychoir concert the next day, and have dinner with his family Sunday night with the Wainwrights.  He put in his Birthday meal request for his favorite birthday food – Pad Thai for dinner and chocolate cake with pistachio pudding frosting.  He arranged to attend an “Ironbirds” baseball game with his Grandma Sandy and Grandpa John, taking his little brother Sam and little sister Roxie Jane with him.

That normal birthday Max was planning never happened. Today Max would have turned 21. 

Later the 12^th, Max became delusional.  He began sending strange texts to friends and family.  In the very early morning of Sunday, July 13, Max left his home and walked 4 blocks to the Amtrak line in Aberdeen.  He was killed instantly by a freight train. 

We miss him so much.  We love Max so much.  We have heard regrets from many people, who have wondered if only they had called him back, or stayed in touch, or reached out again.

Maxwell’s life has been saved many times by the love, attention, friendship, and care of hundreds of people these last few years. 

We ask that you remember what was best about Max. Learn the lessons of his mistakes.  If you could have done more, do it now. Serve the people that are still here.  We all need friends. We all need to be loved.

Maxwell was our brother, our son, and our friend.  We are grateful that he now rests in peace.

Max Update (Complexity that Engulfs)

I have been trying to talk about Max for months.  For years now.  I've wanted to share an update, and tell people what is happening.  So they'd know.  I've wanted to talk about how it feels so I can deal with it.  It has gotten in the way of nearly everything else I want to say.

Did you know I have over a dozen blog posts started, which I cannot figure out how to finish?  Seriously, when I open up the blogger dashboard, I have an entire screen of Draft.

What happens is I sit down and start to write, or I upload a couple of photos I like, and Max drifts into my mind, like a fog that obscures the details of a landscape.  This huge thing that's invisible when you look at it up close, but when you try to see through it, everything else turns gray and disappears.  I can't will it away, my vision is clouded. I write a little something, furtively trying to clear the fog from my mind, become lost in the complexity of my life, and give up, thinking I'll try again later.

There is a computer game series called "Civilization" that is popular.  There is an organization called "Humble Bundle" that puts together collections of computer games and sells them to raise money for charity.  It's a niche audience, but they've raised some ridiculous amount of money.  Seriously, over the years they've been selling bundles of games, they've collected, like MILLIONS of dollars.

My kids all know that I think it's silly to spend money on something new when you still have something old that works.  This is like triple-true for video games.  But the Humble Bundles always put these cute videos together marketing the collected games that are fun to watch.  So I went and watched this one, even though I know I'm not going to buy a new game.

And I wept.  As soon as the video started, I saw the little bug in the lower right-hand corner indicating that the music would be "Baba Yetu", a piece of music from the Civilization IV soundtrack.  It's a Swahili translation of The Lord's Prayer.  It's also a song that Max used to sing with the Maryland State Boychoir.  I cannot hear it without seeing his performance of it in my mind  The transporting smile on his face of concentration and joy as he sings so beautifully.  How I miss that.

That very thing is what happens over and over.  I know we should not be defined by the trials in our lives, especially not by the trials happening to someone else.  It has been such a hateful, heartbreaking, horrific experience with Max, that has no end in sight.  It it is SO hard not to get lost in the discursive thoughts about him and what is going on with him.




But crying about it seems to make it easier to write about it. Max is currently in rehab.  A locked-door, no contact with the world rehab.  He'll be there until February 19th.  After that, his living arrangements are hazy.  He might end up in a half-way house waiting for a bed to open at a residence facility that can treat him.

He's been diagnosed as bi-polar with psychotic features, specifically delusions.  He's also a drug addict.  The two things feed each other.  His delusions are rooted in a belief that when he is high, he has experiences with higher planes of existence.  Beings of great, god-like power.  Insights that relate to the future and our place in the universe.  He knows we disagree, he knows that his caretakers disagree, but that's the grave power of a real delusion; to the person experiencing it, it is very real.

A key feature of most addiction treatment programs is the 12-step sobriety plan, which holds as a central figure of its process that the addict needs to focus on a higher power to give the addict strength to control the addiction.  Can you see the dysfunctional feedback loop here?  Max thinks his most intense and visceral experiences with any "higher power" have occurred while he was high.

I think it's important to emphasize that 12-step programs are not necessarily religious.  They certainly can be, they're set up so a participant's religion fills the role of the "higher power" required.  But it doesn't require the participant to have a religion, or even to believe in God.  It requires the participant to have a commitment to something greater than themselves.  It can be the concept of family, or friendships, or it can be patriotism.  Something that connects the addict to an elevating community.

And I worry that Max has so effectively cut himself off from all the available community.  Before Thanksgiving last year, he was admitted to a residence facility that specializes in dual diagnosis treatment.  Max's problem is that when he uses drugs, it's not necessarily because he's relapsing as a drug-user, but rather that's he's symptomatic of his bi-polar delusions.  So when he repeatedly relapsed, he was terminated from the program.

Our kids are born to us, and we are so desperate for them to live, to be happy, to thrive, succeed.  The night Max was terminated from his residence program Maryland experienced record-breaking cold.  A county welfare agency put him up in a hotel with hundreds of other homeless people to get them out of the elements as part of a public health emergency.  We scrambled to find him a rehab that would take his insurance, and my Dad secured placement for Max (via a generous grant) at the rehab he's at now.

My desire for Max is that he live.  I also want him to be happy and functional.  I want him to come back.  I want someone to tell me the ways he is still valuable.  I want to enjoy his company, I want to be proud of him.  But these days, often my every parental instinct is honed to a sharp-edged urgency; I just want him to not die.

I want people to know what is happening.  In case they want to help, or to accurately pray for Max.  I don't want to make Max feel like I am shaming him.  I think Max wouldn't mind honest sharing of what is going on.

Almost two years ago, I posted about Max, and wondered, "Who knew we had a such a capacity to grieve and continue living?"  We continue to live.  We will continue to love.

Mourning, Grieving, and Being Hopeful

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."

--Thomas Paine

We all experience grief and stress in very personal ways.

I can recall the death of my Mother’s father, and remember a song that was playing on the radio as I drove home from high school the morning I heard the news. An insipid song by Julian Lennon, but in my moment of grief, the notes resonated and brought me to tears. When I think about the death of my wife’s Grandpa Jack, I remember seeing Johnny Cash’s video for his cover of the song, “Hurt”, and bursting into sobs while watching it for the first time. Whenever I catch a little bit of it, I feel the echo of that loss, even now, years later.

So, for me, grief manifests itself most powerfully during music. Sometimes, mourning is melancholy, the Blues. Sometimes, it is the great, sweeping, epic wordless poetry of staggering heartache.

My son has been struggling with self-doubt and conflict for a long time, more than a year it turns out. I did not know how much. He found it too difficult to bring his doubts to me directly, and one of his coping mechanisms turns out to have been the use of drugs. As his anxiety reached a crescendo over the Christmas break, he overdosed on a collection of different hallucinogens, resulting in an episode of substance-induced psychosis and a brief voluntary admission to a mental health facility.

In those last two sentences are worlds of complexity that stump me. I write for a living. I mean, really, I write complex contracts for the government, contracts that get reviewed by lawyers and muckity-mucks, and almost never need to be edited for content or clarity. I’m really good at writing. And I have no idea where to start explaining what happened to my son, what is happening now.

I want to warn kids who are thinking about using drugs that of the hundred reasons NOT to, one should be . . . using them

Might

Make

You

Psychotic. I have made the bitter observation that my son has turned himself into an After School Special Punchline.

I want to give an impassioned, scripture-referenced, historically relevant defense of the church and faith. An apologia of whatever unpleasant or bizarre things that make you doubt the reality of God.

I want to reassure whoever is reading this, that no matter how you’ve behaved, no matter what mistake you made, what horrible thing you’ve done, or seen, or said, or experienced, that there is hope for peace, for calm, for happiness. Don’t quit, don’t give up, don’t quit.

But with my son's story, I just don’t know where to start. For now, there’s a moment from last month that I keep thinking about.

He was not in the hospital long. He’s enrolled at a local school, has moved in with an aunt and uncle. He was only in the Mental Health Unit for four days, long enough to get a prescription for anti-psychotic meds. Clean of the drugs he had been taking (per his self-report anyway; one very real consequence of lying about drug use is, you know . . . people stop taking your word about your drug use). He’s medicated to help manage the trailing effects of the psychosis (even though he doesn’t think his symptoms are drug-induced psychosis”, but rather heightened perception of the true nature of the universe). He is seeing a psychologist to talk about the anxiety. A psychiatrist to manage the medication.

He is still struggling with doubt about religion, doubt about my beliefs. That is probably a generous way of framing it; he has declared in calm, polite terms that he no longer believes in God, thinks that religious behavior by intelligent people is the result of a group delusion (to be sure, earnest, good-hearted people who are experiencing cognitive dissonance). But since then, he’s told me in calm, polite terms that he thinks God (or something) is trying to tell him something important, or that he’s been warned of an impending disaster. Sometimes he says he’s afraid he might be crazy. Sometimes he says with great fervor that the things he saw and experienced during his overdose have profound meaning, and he must explain it to me. That he understands God and reality better than me, better than anyone else. It has not been consistent. It has been a mess.

But consistently, he has told me that he doesn’t believe what I have taught him. I think he is still struggling to form a coherent self-image that is based on something besides his parents. I feel sympathy for that process, and really wish he could talk himself into not being so stressed about it.

Through this all, my mind keeps drifting back to a moment a few days after his overdose, before he self-admitted to the mental health unit. He was struggling with very disorganized thoughts, delusions. During his overdose, his behavior was bizarre, unpleasant, scarily non-lucid. He was clearly, obviously, not “himself.” At the time, we didn’t know what was wrong. He presented as scattered, his conversations tangential, often spiraling into nonsensical meaninglessness. He was obsessed with numbers, and images, patterns, certain he knew the meaning of them (and never able to use words to convey that meaning).

I was afraid the overdose had done permanent damage to his brain (or at least to his personality). I teetered on the edge of fear that my son was gone forever. After the drugs wore off, he never came back to his normal state, just gradually reached an equilibrium of bizarre behavior. We would listen to him ramble until we were exhausted, and then ask him to go lie down in his bedroom.

It was a Wednesday morning. I had an appointment at the Vaccine Research Center for my Malaria trial and brought my son with me. His behavior after the overdose was so erratic we didn’t want him to be left alone anywhere. He never manifested symptoms of violence or paranoia, just profoundly disordered thinking (I’ve learned to talk like I am quoting the DSM-IV article about psychosis. Thinnest. Silver lining. Ever). He was waiting with me in the room where they put volunteers after their vaccination.

The movie Rango was on the TV in the waiting room, it was about 2/3s over. Very soon after we turned it on, we watched the main character, a very inexpressive gecko, walking in defeat away from his opponent, leaving the town to be destroyed by the bad guys. Though Rango’s face had no range of emotion, his eyes just two holes, his posture was one of defeat, head down, feet dragging through the sand.

The lonely playing of the guitar as Rango walked across the screen echoed how desolate I felt. I sat, watching my son’s face as he stared rapturously, stupidly, vacantly at the screen, muttering to himself, grinning and talking. I had seen the movie before, so I wasn’t watching it. It was my son, my confused, hurt, damaged son that filled my heart while the music playing in the background.

This is the image I recall when I hear the song play. That moment when I started grieving for the loss of my son, and my fear crystallized. His childhood brought to a stupid end by his careless, flailing use of self-destructive drugs to escape the stress of parental expectation (clean living, honesty, church mission, temple…).

When I think back to that moment, and I hear the music playing again, I feel a great swell of sorrow grip my throat, paralyzing me. He says he cannot believe in the things I say are true. Tells me that all along, he has just been pretending to keep me happy. In part blames me, saying the stress of my expectation made him rebel, but also reassures me there is nothing I could have done to change his course.

So much of the common ground of our relationship seems to have fluttered away from me, like torn shreds of paper carried by an unexpected gust of wind off of cliff. Dust swept from my grasping hands. Sometimes, I feel like my eyes are held tightly shut in denial of the loss, and I am afraid to look because I don’t know what is going to be left.

I knew, my whole adult life I was certain, that it would be hard when my children grew up. I knew they’d become separate from me, and that such a separation could be hard to process. I’d seen other parents having difficulty letting go, parents trying to protect their children in perpetual adolescence. Our collective Western literature and media are overflowing of examples of that story. But I foresaw adult, healthy relationships forming instead, and I looked forward to that.

So I thought it would be different for me. I thought the pain I would feel would be the melancholy of nostalgia, a wishing for simpler times, for just one more bike ride. I’ve never felt like a victim of nostalgia, I’ve always been grateful for growth, change and progress, always able to find the joy in the present moment.

I thought that I would understand and accept it. I thought some aspect of my relationship would mature, maintain, that we would become friends, peers.

This gap that is between us now is alien to me. It is not something I ever considered, and so I feel panic instead.

It’s the same panic I felt when once I stepped off of a bus in a part of town I didn’t recognize. And realized I had just gotten off of the wrong bus, a bus I took by accident. And was now in a part of town where everyone spoke a language I do not. An earthquake has ruined the landscape of my relationship, and there are no landmarks left to tell me where to go next.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post about how hard it is watching adolescent children make mistakes. One of my sisters-by-marriage questioned my claim that it was harder than the hurts of raising smaller children.

This thing that has happened with my son is what I was trying to explain, is what I was afraid would happen. This is the hardship I was trying to articulate (without being too specific about who I was talking about – at the time, there was still the hope on my part that he was done with drugs). The grief, the abject sorrow, is more than anything I have ever felt, worse than anything I have ever imagined. I would never claim that my hardships were somehow “more” than someone else’s, just that this hurts me more than anything else.

It hurts more than any sleepless night, more than any tantrum frustration, more than any child’s illness, more than any hurt I could imagine my kids suffering. Because he is choosing this, he is walking headfirst into it. And I cannot stop him. I cannot suffer it for him. I cannot fix it. I know I am being melodramatic with my talk of destruction and grieving, but that’s my way of mourning. He is still talking to us, even if he is living with a helpful family member and not at home. I know there is hope, I know he wants to have a good relationship with us.

I can do nothing except watch, and pray, and love him anyway, though I feel my heart breaking over and over again. Who knew that we had such a capacity to grieve and continue living?


Liner note; I found out the song playing during the scene described in Rango is not actually on the Rango soundtrack. It is from the soundtrack to, “The Kingdom”, composed by Danny Elfman, from the credits.