His Bright Light

by Danielle Steel

  When I do die, I want to be remembered as a strong person who was able to turn their life around without threats or scoldings, who did it on his own accord. I want to be remembered for the person I want to be, not for the person I was.

  I’m a very versatile person, but my basic personality is of someone who cares.

  When I think of a true friend, I think of someone who really loves and cares about me. They’d make sacrifices for me, just like I would for them. Someone trustworthy, someone who I share beliefs and opinions with, and someone who won’t leave my side if I’m down (loyalty). A true friend is someone who won’t give up on you, no matter what. Someone who wouldn’t put me at risk and would keep me out of trouble, just as I would for them.

  NOTHING would make me compromise those qualities in a friend. And I also believe that you never lose a true friend unless you’ve done something to violate what they expect of you as a friend.

  I’m a “my rules for me, my rules for you” kind of person. I only expect so much from a friend, because I would do all of the above, and more for them too.

  Two things come to mind as I read these journal entries of Nick’s today. One is that he was sick, he had a rampaging disease that was beginning to control him. He was a good kid with a bad disease. And so often kids like that, and people like that, are treated like bad kids, and punished for what they can’t help. I fought desperately for Nicky. I never wanted him to be punished for being sick. It wasn’t his fault. It was my responsibility and one I refused to turn my back on for his entire life. I hated the places that shut these people away, removed them from sight, punished them for their peculiarities, and proved to them that no one loved them after all. I always believed that loving Nicky enough would make a difference, or help, or maybe even cure him. It didn’t cure him perhaps, but never for a single instant of his life did he ever doubt that he was loved. That was my gift to him, the only gift I really had to give him.

  The other thing that struck me when I read his journals is that he had so many friends, really good friends, friends who stuck by him and to whom he was loyal all his life. The friends I saw in the end, and whom I still see at my dinner table now are the ones he grew up with, went to nursery school with, and some he collected along the way in the course of his life. Many of them never left his life. And he added to them over the years, with special people who crossed his path. He was a good friend, and his friends loved him. Although he isolated himself at times, he never lost sight of them, and they hung on to him, and kept him going when he was sad. They never let him down.

  In any case, Nick got off the plane from his wilderness program, looking healthy and happy and tall. He told us all about it over pizza at the airport restaurant, and we chatted for a couple of hours before he left for school. He had some real trepidations about it, but he was willing to give it a chance. I promised him that if it wasn’t good, or right for him, I’d take him out later. John reminded me that even if he didn’t like it, he had to stay. There was no place else to put him. I didn’t answer him, but I knew I had given Nick my word that if it wasn’t a nice place he didn’t have to stay there. And we had promised to visit him on the weekend.

  I didn’t hear from him all week because I knew he wasn’t allowed to call, and on Sunday, the whole family went to visit him, and everyone was excited to see Nicky.

  We arrived, and as promised, the school was small, and it wasn’t unattractive. The boys lived in dorms, and there was kind of a rec hall. But the “teachers” looked like bouncers in a bar to me, and the students had a dead look on their faces. They looked abandoned, and hopeless, and they stared at us like concentration camp survivors who had somehow lost their grip on life. I didn’t like what I saw. We were the only people visiting that day, and when I saw Nick, I felt agony clutch my heart. When I looked into his eyes, I saw a look of panic.

  Nick and Beatie about 1993 (photo credit 1.18)

  Nick and Zara about 1993

  Nick with his friend Max Leavitt

  He took me aside and told me how terrible it was. He said the headmaster didn’t live on campus as he had said that he did, the monitors were hard on the kids, and most of the students were both violent and crazy there, and there was no shrink at all, contrary to what they’d told us.

  “I’m scared, Mom,” he said, and I couldn’t help remembering the endless, fabricated tales when he’d gone to camp, of beatings and attacks and torture, just to keep himself amused and see if I would take him out, but I knew that this was different. Nick was begging me for help. And as I looked at him, I knew to my very soul, that he was being honest with me.

  We talked about it for a little while, and as I left his dorm with him, I saw human excrement on the stairs. I knew without a doubt that he was telling me the truth, and I couldn’t leave him there. I said something to John, and he thought we should try it for a while, at least until we had other options for him. And with a heavy heart, I kissed Nick, waved good-bye, and left with the other children. And I have rarely in my heart felt so strongly that I had betrayed someone I loved.

  I paced the house all night, barely slept, and when John woke up, I told him what I was going to do. He was right, we had no other options for him, but that was no excuse to leave him in a place like that. I called the counselor again, to help me find a school for him, and he grudgingly admitted that he might have a possibility for us, but he hadn’t spoken to them yet. I didn’t care. If I had to, I would teach him myself. But I was not going to leave him there.

  I called the school he was in and told them that I was pulling him out. Their first response was to tell me that I couldn’t have the tuition back. He had been there for exactly five days. I knew I had to get him out. I owed it to him. I told them to keep the money, to just give me back my son. I asked them to put him on a plane that morning, and that afternoon he was home with a grin on his face the size of Texas. Of all the many things I have done in my life, foolish and wise, good and bad, bringing Nick home was possibly one of the best things I have ever done. It restored my faith in myself, my ability to do the right thing, no matter what, and it told Nick more than ever that he could trust me, that I meant it, and would live by it when I gave him my word. He has never hugged me like that in my life, and I have never loved him as much. It was a perfect moment of faith and trust and love. And I never regretted for a minute pulling him out and bringing him home. It was the right thing to do for him, and I knew it.

  Many years after that I was called by an attorney, who told me that the school had closed. Children had allegedly been abused, and injured there, and there was a court case. Years before, there had even been criminal charges against the people who ran the school. They stupidly wanted me to testify, to say what a nice place it was, and I gave them an earful they’d not soon forget. I would have happily been a witness for the prosecution, I said, before hanging up, and never heard from them again after that phone call. I had been right all along about the place, but even without that phone call, I’d known it long before.

  I think that Nick trusted me totally after I took him out of that school, and I knew without any doubt from that moment on, that I would never send him away again, not to a place that I didn’t trust, or feel good about, or any place if I could possibly keep him at home. I made a commitment to myself, and to him, to do everything that I could for him. I didn’t want to lock him away, to put him in other hands. We were going to find a solution for him, and we were going to make it work, no matter what it took. And I think for the most part, for the rest of his life, as best I could without endangering him at times, I lived up to that promise.

  9

  Demons

  Once we brought Nick back from the last school, we had to start all over again. Where were we going to put him? And how were we going to help him? I must have made a thousand phone calls, and tapped into every resource I’d ever had for him. We needed a school, and fast. But aside from that, we needed a new shrink, and a competent support system. I called friends, cou
nselors, schools, doctors, psychiatrists, everyone I could think of.

  The first thing I did was line up a new psychiatrist, again highly recommended. He said he had time, and agreed to take Nick on as a patient.

  Next, the school. I called the counselor again, and he recommended a small school in another county. It meant a commute each way for Nick every day, but that was fairly easy to deal with. Nick, John, and I went to see it together. It seemed like a nice place, run by friendly people with good ideas, and they were willing to take him. We had to get some recommendations from his old school, but that was easily accomplished, and within a day or two, he was accepted.

  So we had a school and a psychiatrist, but I knew we needed more than that, and a pediatrician I knew told me about a new drug program for kids that was supposedly run by some very interesting people. I explained that we didn’t need a drug program for Nick, but he thought they were worth talking to anyway, in case they could suggest some kind of support group for Nicky.

  So I convinced Nick to come with me, to talk to them. He didn’t want to, but I asked him to indulge me. And if I remember correctly, I think I bribed him. Either with a movie he wanted to see, or something like a Chinese dinner. I was not above bribery at that point. I would have tried voodoo if it would have helped him. If nothing else, Nick always forced me to be creative.

  Off we went to this drug program, to talk to a woman I’d spoken to on the phone. She sounded young and energetic and enthusiastic, and I liked the way she responded when I told her of Nick’s recent problems. I did not tell her I thought my son had mental problems, I only said that he had just been kicked out of two schools, or rather expelled by one, and asked to leave by the other. I told her about the wilderness program he’d completed, and she was impressed. And I also told her about the appalling school I’d just taken him out of. And from everything she had said, I was anxious to meet her. Nicky wasn’t.

  He listened to his Walkman on the way, looked bored, and told me he didn’t want to stay long. It was late October by then, on a crisp, cool day, and as we rode along, I thought of all the hoops Nick had had to jump through, and changes he had to adjust to since the previous summer. I knew how hard it had to be on him, but ever since I’d pulled him out of the last school, he seemed in relatively good spirits, and he was looking forward to his new school.

  We waited for a few minutes in a waiting room at the drug program. It was a decent-sized house, with the twelve-step creed blown up on a wall, and a handful of teenagers wandered in and out while we waited. And then the woman we had the appointment with appeared. She was young and pretty, had long, dark-blond hair, huge green eyes, and her name was Julie. I remember that she was wearing a long, flowered dress, and a warm smile, as she shook my hand, and introduced herself to Nicky. And instantly, I knew I liked her. I’m not even sure why, except that she seemed bright and quick and warm, she seemed to get the gist of everything we were saying, and she was interested in Nick.

  We told her about his new school, and new psychiatrist. The idea was to give Nick a fresh start, and we weren’t quite sure why we had come, or what we wanted from her. But one thing I knew with absolute certainty five minutes into the interview was that I wanted this woman in Nick’s life. I felt immediately drawn to her. And something about her told me that she could make a difference. Little did I know at that point in time how much she would come to mean to me, and to Nick. How could I possibly have known then that she would become my sister, my partner in Nick’s survival, and a friend for life?

  We decided that the best way to proceed was for him to come and visit her once a week for counseling, just to shore up what he was doing with his psychiatrist. There was no point putting him in the drug program, but I liked what she had to give, the spirit, the hope, the life she radiated. She was willing to see him privately once a week as an independent patient, and the drug program she worked for let her do it. Neither she nor I were exactly clear about what her usefulness would be, but I liked her so much, and admired her openness and honesty, and obvious skill with Nick, that I wanted him to see her. And Nick was equally enthusiastic about her. As I had, he really liked her. She seemed like a translator between the world of psychiatry and how Nick applied it to his real life. She was also a terrific translator between Nick’s teenage angst and needs, and my more mundane conservative ideas.

  All of Julie’s expertise, she explained to us, was in the area of chemical dependency, but her real gift was understanding teenagers. She liked them and enjoyed working with them. Problem teenagers were her specialty, usually involving drugs, but not always. She also dealt with behavioral problems, which seemed appropriate for Nick. She said she was in recovery, and had been for close to ten years, and had been counseling teens for most of the time since then. She seemed to me to have a gift for it, but she also let us know that although she had years of experience, she had no formal training. But from what I could see, and her quick, insightful way with Nick, it didn’t matter to me.

  She was the adolescent program director at the place where we met her, and previously she had been the program director for another well-known drug program. And she told Nick that she had had experience with drugs herself in her youth. But more than anything, she seemed able to listen to Nick, and translate what he was saying into reasonable needs and feelings. It was as though she understood not only his needs and fears, but his language, which at times, I didn’t.

  It had taken only days since his return, but I was immensely relieved at the resources we’d found, and for once, I felt optimistic about the outlook, as Nick did. He was actually excited about what he was doing. If we were lucky, we were going to help him turn his life around. At fourteen, that would be quite an accomplishment, and I finally felt hopeful about his future, for the first time in a long time.

  His life was a bit of a relay race after that, as he traveled across one bridge to school, and back again to see his shrink several times a week, and then across another bridge once a week to see Julie. He was lucky if he got home by dinnertime most days, but he seemed to like what he was doing. For a time at least.

  But within a month or two, he was having minor squabbles with the powers-that-be at school. They had a complicated disciplinary system that required you to make points, or chastised you when you lost points. And Nick seemed to have a hard time following it. The rules thing again. But he did his best, and they weren’t complaining. And Julie seemed to be helping him, he liked going to her, but the real disappointment was the psychiatrist we’d found him. I had the feeling that he had little interest in, or sympathy for, Nick. And the message I was getting from him was that Nick was a spoiled brat, and his problems were fairly minor. And in return, Nick hated him, and described him as “an asshole.” I thought of switching shrinks again, but I had tapped into every resource I knew, and Nick seemed to be so resistant to psychiatry. I was beginning to think it was hopeless to find the right shrink for him. And during that time, Julie seemed to meet many of those needs.

  Nick went on with the status quo for a few months, did well at school at first, but eventually things slowly began slipping. He was getting depressed about everything again, and dabbling in drugs off and on. I found an empty nitrous oxide canister in his room, which panicked me, and the school thought he’d used one at school, during recess, although Nick vehemently denied it. And this time, I believed the school, and not Nicky.

  In reading his journals now, I know that during that winter, before he reached fifteen, at various times he used or tried a veritable smorgasbord of drugs to boost his spirits, everything from marijuana, to LSD, to “mushrooms,” ecstasy, and speed. I think he must have been using a fair amount of marijuana, which most probably only depressed him further.

  He was “isolating” in his room again, keeping away from the family, and although he wasn’t having any serious problems in school, he wasn’t happy either. The only thing that seemed to help him was seeing Julie.

  I was not aware of his drug use at th
e time, although I kept a fairly good eye on him. I think he also tried cocaine. He wasn’t addicted to anything, but he was definitely self-medicating. I had also been told by then that problems that presented themselves like his, with fairly consistent depression, worsened markedly during adolescence. The constant increase of hormones in his system would be an ever-greater challenge if he truly had serious mental problems. But at that point no one had confirmed, or even admitted, the fact that he had serious problems. He was constantly defined as a very bright, spoiled boy, who was having a tough time with adolescence. All I wish now is that I, and the professionals who had said those things, had seen his journals. They would have given all of us important clues we needed. But I had too great a respect for his privacy to read them.

  Julie left the program she was in, in the spring, and began seeing private clients in their homes, to help with teenagers who were having behavioral problems in school, or trouble getting along with their parents, and I asked her to see Nick at home. He was getting harder and harder to manage, more isolated, more depressed, more belligerent, and more hostile. Getting him to come to dinner at night was a daily ordeal, and when he arrived, he was just as likely to show up in his underwear as in his bedspread. Bluntly put, he was starting to act downright crazy. And even Julie said he was different, and more difficult than the other clients she dealt with, but it didn’t seem to daunt her. She was tirelessly creative about coming up with solutions to make life more palatable to Nicky. She also seemed to find a way to get through to him, even when we couldn’t. And it was obvious to me even then that she was extremely gifted at what she did. She could reach Nick when no one else could.