The Prodigal Son...

Well, he is gone again.  I keep losing him to Alaska.  But this time it is on a positive note.  I didn’t have to send him there, anywhere so that we could all perhaps get a reset.  I didn’t have to send him away this time.  This time, he went of his own volition, his own accord, and instead of running away from something, he appears to be moving toward something, perhaps a life that is his own, dysfunction in check, at least for today.

I cannot tell you what a relief all of this is for me.  It has been such a very long road.  So hard, arduous, lengthy and feels like it is never ending, this unremitting bottoming out with him.  So today, having had a very nice last week with him, to have spent a great deal of time together without fighting and hardship and strife, feels like nothing short of a miracle.  

So yesterday we said our goodbyes again at the airport.  Me hugging him tightly and praying.  We have done this particular thing, so many times in the intervening years. But this time, I was praying not just for his survival, but also his happiness.  Amazing how sobriety changes things.  Before his happiness was such a far off thing, I was always just so busy praying that he would survive himself long enough to perhaps maybe, one day get sober.

So it was with a happy heart that I watched him walk away from me yesterday.  It was with hope, and joy and love that has always been there, but was just so covered over with fear, dread, hardship and a never ending feeling of loss.

He will be working on a fishing boat all summer.  And I have to say, that although I have never wanted to work on a fishing boat, I do envy him all the natural world he will be mired in.  I love that he is spreading his wings and finding out who he is, what he wants and where he wants to be in this life.  I pray that sobriety continues to be important...but I know that I am not in charge of that and instead of being all up in his business, I need to attend to my own life, my own problems, my own issues.  That is mine and that is what I need to do.

It was a bittersweet moment.  I loved that he was moving onto something good and I was sad that I would not be able to participate in his daily life.  And it struck me how very much time has passed since I actually wanted that...

He has been that son with the extravagant spending, the never ending need for more, the son that has wasted away pretty much everything he has ever had:  money, friendship, family, health, sobriety, life.  He has been the one who has taken all of the above as some sort of God given right, and so valued all of the above as one might who believes and lives as if there is a never ending supply.  

But this time as he took off for parts unknown, he was rearranged.  He does see the value, the priceless of the life he has, regardless of whether he is sure that he wants it.  He is capable of reflecting upon himself, his wants, his needs, and his own ability to provide those things for himself.  In short, he is growing up.  And it was such a pleasure these last, almost five months, watching him grow and change and blossom.  I pray that this new adventure is just another way for him to open up and level up in this life.  I pray that he never forgets that sobriety made all of this possible and without that, there is only the miserable life of an addict waiting for him.  I really pray that he feels that deeply within his bones.

But as it is with motherhood, I let him go again, still.  The never ending cycle of culling back close to you and then unfurling so that your children may venture out to whatever it is that awaits them next, always praying that it isn’t the end, not their end.  But always knowing that life is unpredictably predictable...and so it is.

I pray that my son return home in the fall sober and richly rewarded for his efforts.  I pray that he find himself in all the wildness, that interior hum that flows through us all, that requires quite a bit of effort to hear with all the busyness we throw at it in some sort of misguided effort to drown it out.  I know the secrets of life exist in those quiet moments where there is only me, the natural world and God.  That is where my life exists, that is where I find meaning and purpose and love and humanity.  In the absence of all those things...removed from the daily grind, the responsibilities, the humdrum of daily existence and I, instead, orient myself and my life towards what really matters:  peace within.

And so I pray it is with him.  May he find himself once more in the waves of the ocean, the landscape of wild Alaska.  In the flora and the fauna, and may he return home to me once more, handsomely rewarded for his efforts and a deeper understanding of all that is most important in this life:  how you show up and the person you uncover in that process.

Do good work, son.  And know that I love you always, deeply and with all that I am.

Again.

Still.