I’m a mother. I always will be. While we were raising our children, I thought one day they would fly free on their own and my life would go on, independent of their needs, other than them having my love and blessings, however their lives unfolded. What I did not know then is that motherhood, just as fatherhood, is a life-long commitment, no matter how your children come into your lives. Whether they were born to you, adopted or fostered, you are tied to their well-being and future from that point on. There are no guarantees that things will turn out well, no matter how your children arrive. There are risks each time you add a new life to yours. The only time you walk away is when that is the only thing to do to help them survive, and this is a risk that may not have a good outcome. I know, because I had to do this. And, yes, there is a story here, part of which you may already know.
A few months ago, I wrote about our adopted son, Damon, who was fighting the demons of alcohol that caught him before he even took his first breath. His biological mother was young, just 14 when he was born. Even at that age, she had begun drinking and that meant he did as well. We had warned him from the time he could understand that alcohol was a danger to him in ways it might not be to others. He took this seriously until he didn’t, sometime while studying business at the University of New Hampshire.
He wrote about taking his first real drink when assigned to do so while at Avenues Rehab in Dublin. What he explained about his first encounter with serious drinking was akin to “It felt like I had come home.” What he meant was that his body needed alcohol every bit as much as it needed water, food and blood to survive. Alcohol was the missing component, part of his DNA that made him feel whole since he had been ingesting it from the moment he became a multicelled being. His fight against alcohol was a fight against his own body. His mind wanted to quit, but his body did not.
One of its early effects was that he was on the Fetal Alcohol Effect Spectrum, where he had quirky learning disabilities, including not being able to easily make connections between unrelated things. For instance, he could easily add three apples and two apples, but couldn’t begin to figure out how to add three apples and two oranges. Slight abstractions were an issue until he began getting help in the fifth grade. This happened because his school offered a fourth and fifth-grade combined class to ease overcrowding. I insisted he join that class, pointing out that if he needed to be held back, few would notice since he would appear to be with the same peer group. If held back, he could relearn what he had missed and could be a mentor to those who needed help in areas in which he excelled. His teacher agreed, and from that point on, the school began offering him additional help.
It worked so well that he acquired an associate’s degree from UNH and spent over 12 productive years working for the United States government at the Passport Office in Newington. This is where he met his wife and earned a good living. This was until he had to leave the job and survive on SSDI disability pay due to other long-standing issues that worsened as he aged.
He suffered from anxiety, depression and agoraphobia that showed up when he was barely 4 years old. It first appeared when we took him to see Bambi for his birthday with a group of young friends. He balked at going into a strange building with so many people he didn’t know. His fear was palpable and was not something he easily overcame as he aged. He learned to slowly risk immersing himself in new environments to handle the unknown, including new school rooms, schoolmates, and new jobs. It made him an ideal and loyal employee who wanted to excel and stay put at whatever job he found. It also made him work hard at any relationship he was involved in. He wanted stability and hated change.
What this ultimately meant was that his struggles were not just against alcohol and his psychological make-up; they were about needing to find a place to live where he could build a new life, maybe without his wife, who chose to leave him when his drinking took too great a toll on their marriage. She hoped this would prompt him to stop drinking and seek help. A couple of years before, he had met his four half-sisters and brother on his father’s side who lived in Virginia and were vacationing in New Hampshire. They had been looking for him for years, just as he had been searching for them. The closed nature of many adoption records made this a difficult process. His joy was not only in finding blood relatives but in recognizing that they all resembled him and accepted him as part of their family. He now had a genetic history and one more family to which he belonged. He also learned more about who he was as they tried to fill in many blank spaces. It probably
was this growing knowledge about himself as well as his brothers’, friends’, and father’s
encouragement, his wife’s absence and my persistence, that made him finally agree to seek help with his addiction.
Agreeing to go to Avenues Rehab was the catalyst that changed the course he had been on. He not only stopped drinking and desiring to drink, at least in his mind, but became proud of himself and all that he had accomplished in life. He made new friends, could go to new places without fear and became more socially adept. After he finished that first month-long step, he realized he needed to follow the program and take the next steps that included a sober living environment. That was when things began to fall apart.
He tried to return to Avenues for another round of treatment but had to leave after a few days due to his insurer’s inability to pay. They also rejected his attempt to move into a sober house, saying in a letter that he “didn’t qualify and should be able to live on his own and go to out-patient meetings.” They even mentioned that he had “no emotional issues that required further treatment.” The irony of this is that he had been under care for anxiety and depression for years and had been recently hospitalized several times for alcohol related issues. He came to live with me and tried to heal himself by going to Planet Fitness each morning while continuing to search for other places to live that were affordable, without success. His friends were worried, and so was I.
He began drinking so much that I had to ask him to leave. I told him I couldn’t watch him kill himself, and if he ran out of money for a motel or hotel room, he might realize his only option was to pay for a sober house on his own. His monthly SSDI check would cover it, just barely, but it would be a place to get the help he needed. We had even located a few places that told him they had room for him. I took the risk of asking him to leave, just as his wife had, hoping it would be what would prompt him to take the steps he needed to guide his own survival. But by this time, he had no confidence anyone could help.
He moved to a motel in Nashua, and despite our warnings, he wanted to try going through withdrawal on his own, thinking that may be the answer. It wasn’t. He died in a Nashua hospital emergency room three days before his Jan. 1 birthday; three days before he would have turned 53, the age his mother was when she died from acute alcohol poisoning.
For all of this, I have my memories of him as a young child, his life in Africa with us, his teenage years, as well as his young adult years, his relationship with his friends, his two brothers, his children, his wife, his successes and happinesses, all his dreams, his hugs and love. My sadness is huge, but taking the risk of adopting him was worth it, and he needed to decide for himself to seek help. Every moment he spent with us added to our lives and became part of who we are and how we approached others in this world. He even spoke at a podium in front of a large audience during my husband’s memorial service. He had written a beautiful eulogy to Andy, and although shaking, he delivered it with style and grace.
I’ve never been so proud of him as he overcame years of agoraphobic fear, doing something he so badly desired to do well, out of love for his stepdad. I miss him but would do the same again. I don’t know what the alternative could have been.
One final way he added to the world was his desire to have his story told if it would help others. He approved of my writing about his attempts at sobriety and his relationship with Avenues Rehab, just as he took pride in my mentioning his role in naming the hill behind our old house King Kong. And I know he would approve of this column, hoping it would help others understand how important taking risks is and seeking help can be when faced with problems that seem insurmountable. I just wish he could have taken the risk of trusting others to help him fight his demons and save himself from his body’s cravings.