empty chair

Last weekend there were fleeting glimpses of the old AJ, just for a few hours, like a rainbow appearing momentarily between sunshine and rain. Reach out to try and grasp it and it disappears through your fingers. 

On Saturday night he appeared, installed himself on the sofa and watched a WHOLE film with me and little M, who glanced across at me once or twice – beautiful dark eyes fringed with long lashes, simultaneously brimming with meaning and filling up. He didn’t even mind sharing his Tangfastics – since it was a special occasion. He is cautious around his brother and whilst understandable, I find that heartbreaking. They made a cocoon of duvets and blankets, separated only by the dog who refused to be left out. An unspoken conversation passed between Little M and I – look, look. He’s here. 

Later, I was struck by how such an ordinary evening for most people is utterly extraordinary for us. I must not let my hopes run away with me, I countered, as I brushed my teeth. Once M and I were ready for bed, he moved in close and said “that was nice”. Yes – I replied, and we left it there for a few minutes, thoughts roaming in companionable silence. Eventually, “mummy, what do you worry about?” and after some thought I replied, “oh, lots of things. Work, grandma………” I hesitate: “AJ”. We’ve made a pact to be more up front with him. It feels uneasy. “Anyway, what do you worry about?” I ask. “You” he said. I pull him closer. I don’t know what to say, and I don’t want him to see me cry again. 

Sometimes I wonder if it makes things worse, to have AJ back for a while. It is a sharp and bittersweet reminder of everything we have lost. It is precious and oh so fragile. Like watching as a bubble floats up, up into the sky, before bursting and showering you with your own tears, bringing you straight back into the harsh reality of how things actually are. 

The next day I walked the dog for miles after breakfast, trying to work out how I am, and what today might bring. Those of you in my shoes will know that you wake every day in half dread, half fear, with a glimmer of hope thrown in for good measure. Unresolved on the matter, I returned to find AJ waiting on the stairs. “Let’s go to the beach mum, the weathers going to be lovely” and I felt my shoulders drop from somewhere high by my ears. Today might be another good day. 

In a heartbeat the decision was made. We packed towels and swimmers and beach shoes, debated a football and gave up on finding the kite and we bundled into the car before anyone could change their mind or fall out. They sat in the back, AJ and Little M, an earphone each, listening to their brothers latest tracks, chewing fruit pastilles, each looking out of their own window lost in thought, or more likely as I now know to be the case with boys of this age, thinking of absolutely nothing at all. And me? I am afraid to be alone with my thoughts. I’m even more afraid of being alone with my memories. Don’t look forward, don’t look back. Just stay here and now. So I sat in the front, hardly able to breathe, nursing my tattered nerves and daring to hope for just one more day of peace. Telling myself to just enjoy the moment.

We eat fish finger sandwiches and drink beer and prosecco and walk to the end of the pier and talk about how one day he will fling my ashes off the end of it and remember me. We buy Mr Whippys from the ice cream van and as I loop my hand through his arm he says “I know I am a bit of a shit but I am trying mum” and I don’t know what to say so I just squeeze his arm.

Later, we head down to the marine lake and assemble a makeshift changing tent from my coat and a towel and both boys complain bitterly about passers by seeing stray body parts. “Nobody’s going to be looking at you” I say, cheerfully dropping my own drawers with neither coat nor towel for coverage and note that I have turned into my mother. After much faffage we emerge into the March sunshine with pasty winter bodies and hire our first paddleboards of the year and go out onto the water. As we paddle out into the sunshine, little M takes great delight in being the “expert” and offers advice to his older brother whose first time it is. Mostly, though, we paddle in silence, sun beating down on our faces, and the world looks and feels different. Lighter, lighter, just for a short while. And little M catches my eye, and I feel something catch in my throat, is it my heart? And I paddle, and I paddle, and I enjoy the sun on my face, and for just a moment, I can just be. People watch us, the only three on the water. What do they see? Three mad people paddleboarding in the middle of March? A picture of a perfectly formed family? Looks can be deceiving. If only they knew. 

The water is calming, it always is.

Afterwards, they head off to the amusements with a handful of coins. We sit with cups of strong tea and AJ sends me a text photo of little M with a long snake of tickets and I text back quickly, please don’t bring back a dog- eared giant teddy with only one eye, and they arrive, thankfully no teddy or poor goldfish but pocketfuls of sweets and they are hungry again, endlessly hungry. 

Later, we head back up the m5, AJ’s iphone bluetoothed to the car, and we listen to our long journey anthems ( every family surely has them?). And little M looks at me, his eyes brimming with tears and that unspoken conversation again, because we both know that none of this will last, which makes it even more precious. We both know to hold onto these fleeting moments, when we see AJ again, before he goes again to his other place. I break off the eye contact to look out of the window, as he can read my face so easily. He is telepathic, that child. Too much empathy, if that’s possible. 

And then we sing, and we sing, and open the sun roof and look up at the remains of the sunshine in the sky.

As we near home, AJ gets tetchy. And five minutes after we arrive back, he reappears in a hoody, and announces he is going to Brads, which is the one thing we know with absolute certainty that he isn’t going to do. Later, The Middle One calls. “Where are you?” I say. “At Brad’s” he replies. “Is your brother there?” I ask, already knowing what the answer will be. 

It’s been a really hard six months, since AJ lost his job. They finally let him go, after the incident at the festival which turned into yet another emergency hospital admission which turned into pneumonia. When he was finally well enough to go back to work, they fired him on the spot for persistent absence. He had gone back to work early that morning, lunchbox tucked under his arm, still coughing, still tacky with sweat but having decided it was time to return. He was home just over half an hour later, I was still in my dressing gown pottering around the kitchen, and as soon as I saw him, I knew. His face creased into floods of tears as his mass enveloped my frame. “But I really was unwell mum” he wept, and he really did weep, with all the feeling of injustice and dismay of a child that had just been given an ice-cream that had been immediately dropped in the sand. “I know” I said, and I held him, and I thought , but you weren’t all those other times, were you. And he cried and he cried and I held my enormous man-child, making occasional soothing noises and stroking his hair. And I thought, that’s not exactly true. Sometimes he was too unwell to go to work, but not all of the time. It’s a funny kind of no-mans-land, a teenager with severe depression amongst a myriad of other undiagnosed mental health issues. Where do you draw the line? How do you know the difference between – “I’m not getting out of bed today because I can’t be arsed” to “I’m not getting out of bed today because I’ve smoked enough weed to knock out an elephant” to “I’m not getting out of bed today because there is a “y” in the day” to “I cannot get out of bed today because I can’t face the world and it would be better off without me?”. Answer. I don’t think you can. Well, I don’t think I can. What I do know is that some days I am full of love and compassion and enough energy and patience to try and understand, and other days I am full of fear for the future and what-might-become-of-him and fury because you know what? I’m tired and not feeling well and would love to put my head back under the covers and not have to face the world but I can’t. Depending on what day it is, so my responses and reactions follow, and sometimes I am not proud of that.

Last week, we had the mother of all rows. Since losing his job six months ago, AJ has worked a total of about eight days. I find this really hard to compute, given that there are currently 1.5 million vacancies that employers are falling over themselves to fill. He is utterly chaotic. He spends weeks and weeks barely leaving his room, then applies for just about every job on Indeed, gets interviews for nearly all of them ( some exceptions: Neurosurgeon (I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear), Pilot, bizarrely, Dog Groomer). I exaggerate here, but you know what I mean. He then fails to turn up to interview for pretty much all of them. He forgot, he decided he wasn’t getting out of bed for less than £12 an hour, got the wrong day, went to the wrong place, I don’t know, was kidnapped by aliens. He starts jobs, most of them temporary, then within a day or two it’s all gone horribly wrong. He must be the most unfortunate almost twenty something in the Cotswolds. Except is he, I wonder? What is going wrong? Does he sit all day watching shite on YouTube on his phone? Is he too gobby? Lazy? Rude. In all honesty, I don’t think so. And yet something just isn’t right. 

Earlier this year he was offered a job at a large privately owned estate. Largely outdoors work, lots of training, a reputable employer, with a large, young workforce. Thank god, I think. He might meet new friends. I am so desperate for him to meet new friends. He spends such an inordinate amount of time on his own and I worry, incessantly. We big him up. So proud of you, so excited for you. This could change everything. “I’m going to make you proud mum” he says. And he goes off for a day of paperwork and induction on cloud 9. He arrives home later, I hear his key in the lock, I have been watching, waiting, and he goes straight up the stairs. I hear his door bang shut, the blind go down, and I hear the familiar creak of him getting into bed. I wait as long as I can, and then I go in. Darkness. I can make out his head under the cover. “How did it go” I ask, and I think….what a stupid question. “They don’t want me” he replies “Nobody wants me”. And he refuses to talk any further and I retreat, go downstairs, and sit, staring into space. It’s like being strapped into a rollercoaster when you have vertigo and just having to crack on with it anyway. Being outwardly endlessly optimistic when you just want to weep is utterly exhausting. 

Eventually, I coaxed it out of him. They ask if he has a criminal record. He says no, but he has just received a caution for possession of class B. And just like that, his brand new future is snatched away. And he weeps, and he weeps, and he says he thought it would be better to tell the truth, and now he knows it is not better to tell the truth, and in this instance I weigh it up. I am furious on his behalf, this is not a job that requires a DBS check. So they would never have known. And yet, and yet. And he roars and he wails and he laments every poor choice he ever made (which takes some time as there have been many) and he says how he realises now, the limitations of having been in trouble with the police, and eventually, exhausted from it all, he goes to bed, where he stays for nearly two weeks. I think back to that letter I wrote to Matt Hancock, just over three years earlier, where I predict my son will become criminalised. What have we done to our children? 

On Valentines Day I had another very long text message whilst I am sitting in a meeting at work. Reading it, I wonder if my heart has actually stopped. “This is not a goodbye message” definitely reads like a goodbye message and I the switch is thrown into a panic attack that engulfs me and I know I need to leave, right now, and find my child, who had been missing for I don’t know, a day or two. It is the most heart rending, terrible, sad and lonely message I think I have ever read and I know in that instant that whilst I thought my heart had been broken before, it hadn’t, because now it most definitely was. The pain you feel on behalf of your child surely has to be one of the worst pains of all.  

Going back to the mother of all rows. He had found some cash in hand temporary work. A friend of a friend knew someone called Badger, or Hedgehog, or some other name that told me they were unlikely to be working in publishing, or forensic science, for example, and “this is great” I muster again, with feigned enthusiasm and once again, we make sandwiches the night before, and encourage him to get a decent nights sleep as if he is about 7 years old and I wake him the next morning and he says “I am too ill to go to work” and I look at him. And then I lose it. Massively, ungracefully, full on shouting and all the pent up frustration of six years comes out. 

I march imperiously out of his room and downstairs into the kitchen where little M is halfway though some cereal and he eyes me, warily, and asks if I’m okay. “Oh yes” I say, and we both know I’m not, and I put the kettle on but wonder if it’s too early for something stronger and before I know it AJ is behind me in boxer shorts, scratching his nuts and coming back for round 2. “Mum, I know how you feel”….and that is it. She blows. And all the hurt and anger I ever felt comes spilling out and……….and it ends up with “you think I’m well enough to go to work? Do you? Well I’m not. I am barely hanging on” and ten minutes later he has slammed out of the house, fully dressed and gone, and little M is in floods of tears and so am I and I feel like the worst mother ever. 

Later, little M goes to school and I clear away the breakfast things and decide to work at the dining table. The wheels somehow just keep turning. It is both an extraordinary way to live and I suspect a surprisingly normal way to live. I feel shattered. Inept. Incapable. Gaslighted. Small. I open my laptop. Later, I ask Alexa what the weather is like in Tenerife. “The weather in Tenerife is cloudy” she replies. There is a pause. “Would you like some tips on self-care?” she asks. I stare at her in disbelief. “Ok” I reply, bemused. “Next time you are feeling stressed”, she says, “try stopping what you’re doing and try ten minutes of chores instead. You might feel better after. Would you like another self-care tip?”. “No” I reply, “you can fuck off”. 

I google all the time. ADHD. Borderline personality disorder. Bipolar. I’m constantly looking for an answer, or at least to give it a name. Meanwhile, my own body takes the toll. I was recently standing in the Ashburton Craftmonger. The most soothing oasis of calm, with an array of beautiful things you never knew you needed. It radiates peace. At the time I was wired up to a heart monitor, which was on for 5 days…..I had appointments scheduled for Spinal Surgery, Neurophysiology, Physiotherapy, Osteopathy, Nerve conduction studies, Cardiology. I was (am) still experiencing bouts of tachycardia of up to 198 bpm. It goes on and on. Neck. Shoulders, Hands. Neuropathy. Headaches. Sleeplessness. Absolute bat shit crazy ness. As I stood there, in that oasis of calm, covered in sticky pads for the heart monitor, I was struck by the absolute irony of it, and also by the terrible way in which anxiety and stress, unchecked, becomes manifest in the body. It’s like a pair of control pants, you can redistribute it all you like but it’s all gotta come out somewhere. I suddenly realise I feel wildly, desperately, unhinged. Fragile, it feels, beyond repair. Damaged goods. Worn out, washed up, resigned. Out of fight. An assistant approaches me and asks if I need any help. If only you knew, I thought. 

The constant emotional gymnastics are hard to deal with. Better to train myself to not get too hopeful, and not get too despondent. An even keel, keep that fragile equilibrium.

It is Mothers Day today. For some, a day of joy and celebration, of love and kindness. For others, it is a day to be endured. For those who have lost their own mothers, a day of memories. For those who have missing children, it’s an achingly hollow day with an empty chair at the table. There are many types of missing children. Those that have gone forever, those like mine who are missing in plain sight. We don’t as a society talk much about estranged children, those that have ghosted their parents. It is generally off limits – too difficult and painful to talk about. Although your child is missing, you are no less a mother. I see you.That you put one foot in front of the other day after day is an astonishing act of courage and fortitude. You can and will and do endure, and maybe one day, you might just bloom again.

Motherhood didn’t turn out as I expected. In fact, none of this turned out as I expected. It’s messy, ugly, frustrating, enraging, and heart breaking. But it’s also joyous, wonderful, exhilarating and unspeakably beautiful. It is hard, beyond measure.

All of that said, being a mother to my boys is a surprise, a blessing and a privilege, my life’s work. I know I am lucky and I am grateful for this every day. It is a good job that we don’t know what might be in store for us as we set off down this path. If you have an empty chair in your household today, look after yourself. Go gently.