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I recently visited the local police station, where I registered my firstborn child on the missing person's list.
The last time any of us had seen him was a week before, when he came to visit his sons, who were spending holiday time with us. He has been living apart from his immediate family since his marriage broke down, and for many years has only had limited and supervised access to his teenaged children.
It took a while, but I became accustomed to not knowing his whereabouts whenever he fell off the proverbial wagon. He would surface if he needed money or a meal, and my heart would break afresh at the sight of him.
My son has two serious and immobilizing illnesses: alcoholism and depression. When the demons visit him together and threaten to overwhelm him, he tries to end the pain with suicide. He has almost succeeded on a couple of occasions.
This summer, I got a phone call from someone who had found his bag at one of the GO train stations the night before. It contained his passport and other official identification, and the discovery unleashed a gamut of familiar fears.
It seems irrational to assume responsibility for a man in his 40s, and I try hard to live by the Al-Anon principle of seeing to my own emotional needs before anyone else's, yet the guilt is enormous. I gave birth to him and was one of the biggest influences on him during his formative years; therefore, I must assume some of the blame for his behaviour.
He was only 14 when we came to Canada for his father's work, and he railed against the move and keenly felt the loss of his peers, his family in England and his grandmother. He went through the Canadian school system with a big chip on his shoulder and began to resent authority of any kind. They say parents are always the last to know and, looking back, I should have seen the signs. It's yet another realization that prompts the guilt within me.
Standing in the police station that morning, nervous and afraid, I was reminded of a painting I love, And When Did You Last See Your Father?, by William Frederick Yeames. It shows a young boy in the time of Charles I being questioned by parliamentarians about the disappearance of his royalist father. He stands on a footstool because he is too small to be seen by his inquisitors, who are seated behind a huge desk. The child is surrounded by uniformed adults and looks dwarfed and vulnerable, exactly how I felt in the unfamiliar territory of the police station, reporting the disappearance of my adult son.
I have come to hate the sound of the telephone ringing and I cringe at the sight of every passing police car. It's a painful waiting game, and I can't help but marvel at the way I seem to go about my daily routine while my rational mind is replaced by dark imaginings. I wonder if it's the body's innate wisdom of preparing for the worst? If I play out the dark scenarios over and over in my mind, will it lessen the impact if and when an officer comes to my door in the middle of the night to tell me they've found him?
There are a few items of clothing in his bag and I am tormented by the dilemma of wanting to throw them in the laundry or keep them, in case they are needed as evidence; but evidence of what? The answer to that question is too dark for me to contemplate.
I want to scream at my husband to search the length of the railway tracks where the bag was found. I wake in a paralyzing sweat after a nightmare vision of my husband coming back from such a search, his face contorted in grief, to tell me he'd found him but that he had lain there for many months.
They say that history has a way of repeating itself and I am reminded of my brother, who walked out of our house many years ago at the age of 16, before I was married, and didn't return for more than two years. During that time, my mother was put through hell several times, and the loss of him almost killed her.
She pestered me for months, until I spent hours telephoning hospitals and prisons in an effort to trace him. He left without a word and her health went downhill during his absence, but the shock almost finished her off when he walked into her bedroom more than two years later, unapologetic and nonchalant, as though he'd never been gone.
Not knowing is worse than bereavement. If I knew for sure I would be free to grieve, but this is a never-ending, torturous pain, and it's chronic, an insidious aching that weighs me down during every waking hour. It's a worm in my psyche that eats away at my sanity and my reasoning.
My life is on hold for the duration, but it's not just about me. The whole family is affected by the ripples his disappearance is causing. Alcohol and depression are constants in our lives, and we struggle to stay above the deluge and try to be all things to each other.
We are a family on autopilot, praying and hoping this journey isn't the one to end in a crash landing.
Irene Daly lives in Markham, Ont.