At my most unsettled, I don’t sleep well. I know that’s not unusual, and I only mention it because since becoming a parent, the most unsettled times usually have to do with loss, and during those times, part of why I don’t sleep is that the working things through aspect of dreaming (why isn’t there a verb for having nightmares, nightmaring?) is so painful. Almost to a crisis or a loss, those nightmares end up being about losing my firstborn in some way, from the classic toddler parent image of small-person-racing-toward-street to his being jailed—without books to read—to my being jailed—without him—well, from that smattering my heart’s beating faster so I will stop.
It’s not that I haven’t dreamt about the other three children and loss. I have, believe me. It is true, for me, that the visceral place, the emblematic heart-in-throat somnolent fears go back to that original baby of mine, now fourteen and taller than me.
I am sure that this quiet truth of mine, one I try to ignore because I value sleep and I value my emotional equilibrium, comes to play as I, along with countless others, endeavor to hold up a little light and love for writer Katie Granju and her family mourning the loss of their original baby, Henry. Katie came early to blogging about mama-hood and thus her story was already familiar to many in the writing about mothering world and even more so the reading about motherhood world. For the past month, she’s been spending the lion’s share of her time in the hospital with her 18 year-old son, Henry, who struggled with drug addiction throughout his adolescence, endured a brain injury following a horrific combination of drug overdose and terrible beating incident. She wrote more than once of feeling divided because she has three other children who needed her and yet knew the place she most needed to be was with her original baby, her sweet, hurt, scared boy.
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This is the point a writer, a friendly sort, and a fellow mama wishes to come up with something profound to say, something soothing, just something.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how along with reading David Sheff’s powerful memoir Beautiful Boy—coincidentally right when Katie Granju’s son suffered his accident—my heart broke and my mind was changed about drugs and teens. My family, like so many others, has some addiction issues and especially upon this last month’s experience, I must say, I’m ready to take those sometimes unspoken truths more seriously when talking to (and if the need arises, dealing with) my kids in regards to drugs. We have going for us a pretty darn open relationship, and yet… well, yet. Adolescence is a thorny time with that science fiction experiment going on inside their elongating, voice morphing and hormonally occupied selves.
So, while I could and certainly will write more about my take-home lessons in regards to parenting (and I know I am not alone in this) here, just after learning about this loss, one that occurred to a woman I barely know (and yet feel such affection for especially after small meaningful kindnesses she’s paid me over the years and admiring so much of her work, as the writer/mother world can make true), I don’t have words today beyond I’m so sorry, and I’m so very sad for you Katie Granju and for your lovely, loving, grieving family.
