The sun was shining most of the day today and it brought a heartening current of promise to probably just about everyone sharing it. I know it did to me. Who doesn't welcome the spring equinox and that cat-stretch of daylight hours yawning deep into evening giving us all more time to see and to remember why we are alive?
I've backed off the blog for a day or two in deference to the fragile and deeply personal content of my last entry. Between the tears and caustic burn of recounting even those cursory details about my son's journey and the woefully intensive effort to respectfully, honestly and gracefully say all that needed to be said with as much perfection as I could muster; the whole process exceeded ten hours, concluding just before midnight.
For the following two days, Easter Sunday and yesterday, I was played and felt almost hollowed out. It wasn't the dark kind of hollow where apathy reigns. It was the blissfully exhausting hollow after a mighty purging, and I just wanted to remain quiet for as long as possible.
I also wanted to let that post stand all on it's own for a time; undisturbed and available.
But yesterday a wonderful thing happened.
About four weeks ago I decided to install a stat counter on the blog. My logic being that it would help motivate me to keep writing if I could actually see and prove that my mother did, indeed, show up every few days to read it.
Of course, I am being somewhat facetious because I know that there are others besides my mom who, for reasons either of curiosity, accident or boredom, do occasionally sweep in and get that much-needed eye-lulling to put them right off to sleep sans any bothersome prescriptions. As I have said before, I will take anyone I can get.
So, what happened yesterday was nothing short of remarkable as well as ineffably touching.
I began this literary compositional jouncing eight weeks ago and have been faithfully posting an entry about every two days. I don't know how many or how few readers showed up at the start, but I do know that since I've installed the counter, I average about eighteen to twenty readers a day on slow days, and up to forty or more on holidays and Sundays. (I've discovered that boredom is universal on Sunday nights.)
I posted the entry about Griffin in the wee hours of Sunday morning. By ten o'clock Easter morning already twenty-six people had read it. By the end of the day, forty-seven.
On Sunday evening I received a facebook message from a very sweet and sincere friend of Griffin's from high school telling me that she had re-posted my blog about him on her facebook page and asked if that was alright. She now teaches in the same town where she and Griffin attended high school and said that there is an enormous heroin problem among the teens there. She went on to say that by giving the drug abuse problem a 'face' in a person many in this small town knew, it might carry more of an impact. She also told me that within minutes of re-posting the entry she began receiving emails and phone calls from his old friends who wanted his address so they could write him and send words of encouragement.
Yesterday one-hundred and eight people from all across the country had read that blog. Of course, I assume that most of these are friends of Griffin's and I am deeply moved by their interest in and support for him after all these years.
As fate would have it, he also phoned me yesterday evening and I was able to share with him the reaction of his friends to his story. I could hear the soft and lightly broken strain in his voice as he expressed both his shock and his gratitude, and he said, " Oh brother. Well, even though it is humiliating; if my mistakes can help somebody else, I think it is worth telling. I plan on telling it a lot when I am able to get on with my life."
In spite of everything, Griffin continues to have hope and embrace his gifted and healing sense of humor. I received a letter from him the other day and will share a part of it, which illustrates this:
I am writing this because, due to the stunningly high collective I.Q. of the general populous of the **** County Jail inmates, a few Einsteins got our tier locked-down for the rest of the day. Hence, no phone calls, T.V., Pinochle or basketball; for they thought it a wonderful idea to steal some delicious lemon cookies off of a tray at dinner.
Anyway, this has now become my life; feeling like the alpha male in some paleolithic-era society. Next up for my band of cro-mags is 'fire', then perhaps, 'the wheel!'
Yes, it is like this. I know that I have no one to blame but myself, so I try hard to find the humor in whatever I can.
Maybe I will compose a novel of sorts about my trials and tribulations at the various different county jails I have tenured.
It would be a great tragi-comedy......"
The rest of the letter was much more humorous, however, it revolved around a description of an exchange between himself, a friend and one of the less than brilliant guards whose name figures prominently in and is a necessary component of the story; so it will have to remain untold here.
But I am sharing a bit of him in his own voice for those of you who 'looked in' on him yesterday and would remember and enjoy a taste of the Griffin who is winning his way back. Thank you for caring and please don't give up on him. Don't judge or give up on anyone in his position. There is always a person behind the addict and usually there are also a whole lot of small hurts that stew together to yield the depraved feast of addiction. And while an addict is not a victim in the sense that they consciously choose to take the first step down that road, the fact is that it is a road open to the good and bad alike.
I think it is worth remembering that there are more good people who do bad things as a result of their addictions than bad people who become addicts because it feels good.
Onward and upward................
I've backed off the blog for a day or two in deference to the fragile and deeply personal content of my last entry. Between the tears and caustic burn of recounting even those cursory details about my son's journey and the woefully intensive effort to respectfully, honestly and gracefully say all that needed to be said with as much perfection as I could muster; the whole process exceeded ten hours, concluding just before midnight.
For the following two days, Easter Sunday and yesterday, I was played and felt almost hollowed out. It wasn't the dark kind of hollow where apathy reigns. It was the blissfully exhausting hollow after a mighty purging, and I just wanted to remain quiet for as long as possible.
I also wanted to let that post stand all on it's own for a time; undisturbed and available.
But yesterday a wonderful thing happened.
About four weeks ago I decided to install a stat counter on the blog. My logic being that it would help motivate me to keep writing if I could actually see and prove that my mother did, indeed, show up every few days to read it.
Of course, I am being somewhat facetious because I know that there are others besides my mom who, for reasons either of curiosity, accident or boredom, do occasionally sweep in and get that much-needed eye-lulling to put them right off to sleep sans any bothersome prescriptions. As I have said before, I will take anyone I can get.
So, what happened yesterday was nothing short of remarkable as well as ineffably touching.
I began this literary compositional jouncing eight weeks ago and have been faithfully posting an entry about every two days. I don't know how many or how few readers showed up at the start, but I do know that since I've installed the counter, I average about eighteen to twenty readers a day on slow days, and up to forty or more on holidays and Sundays. (I've discovered that boredom is universal on Sunday nights.)
I posted the entry about Griffin in the wee hours of Sunday morning. By ten o'clock Easter morning already twenty-six people had read it. By the end of the day, forty-seven.
On Sunday evening I received a facebook message from a very sweet and sincere friend of Griffin's from high school telling me that she had re-posted my blog about him on her facebook page and asked if that was alright. She now teaches in the same town where she and Griffin attended high school and said that there is an enormous heroin problem among the teens there. She went on to say that by giving the drug abuse problem a 'face' in a person many in this small town knew, it might carry more of an impact. She also told me that within minutes of re-posting the entry she began receiving emails and phone calls from his old friends who wanted his address so they could write him and send words of encouragement.
Yesterday one-hundred and eight people from all across the country had read that blog. Of course, I assume that most of these are friends of Griffin's and I am deeply moved by their interest in and support for him after all these years.
As fate would have it, he also phoned me yesterday evening and I was able to share with him the reaction of his friends to his story. I could hear the soft and lightly broken strain in his voice as he expressed both his shock and his gratitude, and he said, " Oh brother. Well, even though it is humiliating; if my mistakes can help somebody else, I think it is worth telling. I plan on telling it a lot when I am able to get on with my life."
In spite of everything, Griffin continues to have hope and embrace his gifted and healing sense of humor. I received a letter from him the other day and will share a part of it, which illustrates this:
I am writing this because, due to the stunningly high collective I.Q. of the general populous of the **** County Jail inmates, a few Einsteins got our tier locked-down for the rest of the day. Hence, no phone calls, T.V., Pinochle or basketball; for they thought it a wonderful idea to steal some delicious lemon cookies off of a tray at dinner.
Anyway, this has now become my life; feeling like the alpha male in some paleolithic-era society. Next up for my band of cro-mags is 'fire', then perhaps, 'the wheel!'
Yes, it is like this. I know that I have no one to blame but myself, so I try hard to find the humor in whatever I can.
Maybe I will compose a novel of sorts about my trials and tribulations at the various different county jails I have tenured.
It would be a great tragi-comedy......"
The rest of the letter was much more humorous, however, it revolved around a description of an exchange between himself, a friend and one of the less than brilliant guards whose name figures prominently in and is a necessary component of the story; so it will have to remain untold here.
But I am sharing a bit of him in his own voice for those of you who 'looked in' on him yesterday and would remember and enjoy a taste of the Griffin who is winning his way back. Thank you for caring and please don't give up on him. Don't judge or give up on anyone in his position. There is always a person behind the addict and usually there are also a whole lot of small hurts that stew together to yield the depraved feast of addiction. And while an addict is not a victim in the sense that they consciously choose to take the first step down that road, the fact is that it is a road open to the good and bad alike.
I think it is worth remembering that there are more good people who do bad things as a result of their addictions than bad people who become addicts because it feels good.
Onward and upward................
