Hello and welcome! An introduction for you: I'm a mom, wife, friend, animal-lover, and lacrosse parent who also happens to write, edit and manage a publishing company for a living. So why not start a blog, I thought? And here ya go...

October 18, 2010

A Tragic Loss, A Lesson to Learn


While you hope that most weekends are full of goings-on that you want to remember and cherish, this past weekend was a memorable one for me but in a very sad way. Mid-day Friday I received an email from one of my son's lacrosse coaches, delivering news that you hope you never receive. A lacrosse player who came up through our Junior program and now in 9th grade took his life the night before. It was a boy who'd been well known and well loved. There are no words to sum up the shock of the news.

As I digested what had happened, I remembered a college professor who was once disecting a poem about death, and he astounded us all by proclaiming death was not the worst thing that could happen in life. In fact, there was something far worse than death. What could that be, he asked us? The room was silent. Far worse than death, he revealed, was dealing with the death of a child. In comparison, it would actually be far easier to simply succomb to death yourself than to have to continue your life without a child that you created and loved more than life itself but could not save.

He was right; I've never forgotten it.

Will was a boy I only knew of through his younger brother--a friend, a classmate and an occasional teammate of Chase's. I know his parents since Chase's friend has spent time at our house and Chase at theirs. I know them also from games, seeing them on the sidelines and in the stands because they are extremely active and involved parents with each of their four children--Will having been the oldest. While I certainly don't have a close relationship with the parents, what I know of them from being around them and with them in various locations with our kids and kids' friends, what I know of them from mutual adult friends, they were a great family--good, athletic, outgoing kids; involved, hard-working, supportive parents. They attended a local church in town. Chase's friend is extremely well liked by his peers and from what I now know, his older brother Will was easily as well-liked. He was an athlete who had played multiple sports throughout his life, and he was a musician who played in the school band as well as his own personal band comprised of friends. His types of friends varied--his reach stetched beyond only one group of kids. And he had a way with them all--being a naturally quiet and reserved boy who was genuinely friendly with everyone, understanding and helpful when needed.

While it is always stunning to learn that a person was so tormented and unhappy that they chose to end their life, it is even more so when it's a child who hasn't even begun to live their life yet. And then even more so to know it was a child who--on the surface--appeared well-rounded, healthy, and happy, full of friends, activities and promise. Cleary, there were deeper issues going on but it is beyond heartbreaking trying to figure out why he didn't feel like he could turn to someone for help.

It's been tough for everyone to comprehend Will's actions, especially the younger kids--his own siblings, his fellow high school students, Chase's group of middle school friends who all know the younger brother and therefore knew or at least knew OF Will. And I cannot fathom what his mother and father are coping with. As a mother, I am devastated for them--for their loss, for their attempt to now understand a son who had more going on than they realized...amazing, considering how involved and interactive they were with him.

Saturday night, a candlelight memorial service was held for Will at the high school stadium; hundreds and hundreds of people whom he touched in some way showed up to pay tribute to the friend and loved one now gone. Today is Will's funeral, and there continues to be a sadness and a heaviness in the community for a lost boy and a good family. His parents have three additional children to care for and they displayed their strength of character again by showing up to support the younger boys' sports activities over the weekend. And I'm in awe. All I can think is that, in their shoes, I'd have withered and died myself. I literally don't know how you carry on after the loss of a child. But they are already showing that they will carry on for their other children. They're already talking to their kids and their kids' friends about coping with difficulties--that everyone deals with issues and there is a right way to get through them: by being unafraid to reach out for help.

No matter how sure you are that your own child knows you're there for him/her, that there's no need to ever struggle alone, that they can talk to you anytime about anything, tell them again. Make sure they know you love them no matter what, that you know what being a kid is like and that life growing up isn't always easy but it's always worth it.

October 3, 2010

The Carnage Conga Line



We had a Halloween break-through this year. I've established that I hate haunted houses and scary movies and anything remotely in that genre of "entertainment" (Haunted House Hell, October 2009) And my 12 year old hates that type of scary stuff as much as I do (The Longest Night Ever, July 2009). Once again this Halloween season, these nightmare-inducing locations have popped up around Atlanta and there's some doozies: 13 stories (a mental institution that gets more intense the higher you climb--the challenge being to make it all the way to the 13th story--I hear few do), Chambers of Horror, and an infamous haunt called Netherworld, which is about 20 minutes from my home. Netherworld has been dubbed the "#1 Haunted House in the country" by USA Today so this place is not for the faint of heart. I have friends whose children have attended and made comments about it being "very intense," and "the scariest thing I've ever seen." My own brother in law reportedly "screamed like a little girl" through the entire thing (I did love THAT visual; LOL).



And once again, all my son's cohorts planned an excursion to Netherworld, and just like last year, Chase was sure he wanted to go and begged to do so. I spent days telling him he would hate it, reminding him of the crappy TV show last summer that kept him up all night, the fact that he won't watch scary movies. And even worse, experiencing haunted houses isn't like watching a flat screen you can turn off. These freaks are chasing you and seeming incredibly, incredibly real, I tried to make him understand. I recanted tales of kids he knew that I'd heard attended last year and ended up dissolved in tears. I shared my own horrid tales of ghastly behavior when I attended a haunted house once and only once and how I was haunted by it for years...not by the atrocities within the house but by the atrociousness of my own actions, having transformed into a sniveling mess, glued to the back of a guy I'd barely known and who certainly never called me again afterwards.



Chase was unaffected. The thoughts of headless men carrying their own skulls, the blood, the gore, the embarrassing behavior of a mother from 20 years past...none of it phased him. Evvvvvvverybody was going so surely he would be fine and couldn't he go too? After discussing with John, we decided that this falls into the category of him needing to learn for himself. No amount of me saying he'd hate it was going to convince him. So I figured if I was going to cave on this, then I'd stay nearby with phone in hand and if he hated it, I'd could easily go and get him.


So off we went last Friday night: him, 5 friends, a couple other moms, and me. The plan was to drop them off to meet up with a thousand other friends who were all going, and we parents would head to a nearby restaurant for a bite while they strolled through the halls of blackness and incredibly impressive costumed characters. I watched my phone like a hawk but in the 90 minutes Chase was there, I never got a peep. No call, no text, no flicker of terror from an impressionable pre-teen.

Huh. Amazing.

After eating and with still no word from the kids, we headed back to watch some of the activity at the house since I'd heard a lot of the characters walked around the parking lot. We ended up having a blast, watching kids and adults alike exit the house--some walking, some running, but all thinking they'd made it to safety, only to be chased by one last character: a mental institution-type with a "chainsaw." What a hoot watching that as well as all the other very realistic creatures that were strolling around the outside and along the line of waiting horror-seekers. It was like standing in some other world where the ghoulish and horrifying simply strolled around normal folks--making me think the name "Netherworld" is wildly appropriate.



Chase and all his pals were bundles of energy afterwards, recounting how they managed their way through the moving rooms, horrific creatures and suspiciously dark corners that were never as empty as they seemed. They jabbered and laughed about who cried like girls, who was the most scared, what the inside of the haunted house was like. I asked if they all walked through with linked arms like I saw a few others do and Chase told me about eight of them went through in a group and they were all holding on to each other's shirt backs. "Like a conga line, mom," he said.

Ah yes, carnage and conga lines. A natural combination. But they all reported having a great time. I heard reports that Chase was muttering "I don't know about this...I don't know if I can do this" but alas, he and everyone else in the group made it--and no tears from anyone. Not even me. He even slept through the night all by himself. So does he want to try another one now? "Um, no thanks."

Yeah. I figured not.