I pointed out to him that they were as tired as he was, and that if you put nine people in a van, whatever age, whatever description, after nine and a half weeks of no sleep and grueling work, which the concerts were, more than likely, they’d kill each other. I was sure that once they got back, all would be forgiven.
“What if they don’t take me back, Mom?” he asked, on the verge of tears, looking panicked.
“They will,” I promised. I was sure they would. I thought they’d have to be crazy not to. But then again, I loved him.
We talked about it all for a long time that night and eventually he asked about Europe. And as usual, he asked about Tom. I didn’t want to tell him how badly the trip had gone, or that we had broken up. I was still hoping the rift would repair, it was still early days, it had only been a few weeks since he left me. And I figured Nick had enough on his plate, without adding my problems to his. It was odd enough that he had become my confidant, and occasional advisor. Now it was time to think of him, and not my broken romance, though I was hurting, badly. But I managed to conceal it from him, and feigned good spirits. I was far more concerned about his problems. His life was always on the line, mine wasn’t.
We hugged and I made him laugh a little bit, but for the most part, he looked beaten. I told him to go home and go to bed. He did, for three weeks. By the next day, he was so depressed he couldn’t move. He stayed in bed for days and weeks, sleeping and each day coming closer to the edge of destruction. We were desperately worried about him. We tried to get him to go to the hospital, but he didn’t want to go this time, and the hospital said there was no legal reason to commit him. He was depressed but did not appear to be in grave danger.
The band never called him when they got back, never asked him to return. They showed up at Julie’s house without warning, and wanted their equipment, which was still in our van. Nicky was so devastated he refused to come downstairs, and stayed in bed and cried. Julie and I did the same when we talked about it. There was no way for us to shield him from it. He was in despair over it, wounded, broken. He had let them down, and they had let him go. It was a natural consequence of his actions, and his illness. Those of us who loved him were desperately afraid for him. It was the greatest challenge he had ever faced, particularly given his illness. And he continued to spiral downward.
For Nick, the dream had ended. And all we could do for him was drag Nick toward the future. Julie began talking to him about starting a new band. At first Nick didn’t want to hear it, but after a while the idea intrigued him. Julie kept reminding him that he could do it. As usual, she was his life preserver, his lifesaver, the driving force that would not let him drown, no matter how badly he wanted to do that.
Knowing how depressed he was, instead of waiting for him to get up to give him his meds, she began getting up and giving them to him at five A.M., rousing him only slightly to do it, in the hope that they would have begun to kick in by the time he really woke up several hours later. I’m sure that helped somewhat, but even that thoughtful gesture was not enough to work the magic that was needed.
There was no question that Nick was devastated and depressed by losing the band. But something equally dangerous had happened to him on tour that I didn’t fully understand until later. Nick had come face-to-face with his own limitations and weaknesses while on tour. Cody and Julie both felt that he had seen all too clearly that he would never be able to sustain indefinitely the rigors of that lifestyle. Although he had the talent to become a megastar one day, emotionally it was too hard for him, too taxing, too demanding, too stressful, and he knew that he had to come to the outer edge of his abilities and stretched them further than he should have. His success as a musician eventually would depend on his ability to tour again and again, and endure it. Being unable to do so, for him, meant never being able to do what he really had to. It was a crushing realization for him. Nick had seen at last that he would never be free of the ties that bound him. He was a proud eagle, with broken wings, destined to be earthbound. Having to face that, and what he would never be, and could never have, is perhaps what killed him. Knowing that he could not achieve his dreams, there was nothing left to live for. Julie was not even sure, nor was Nick, that the medications he relied on so totally would sustain him forever. He said nothing to any of us of his realizations or his fears, but both Cody and Julie felt that he had become more acutely aware of his limitations.
Miraculously, in the white heat of his pain, his friends stood by him. Sammy the Mick, Max, whom he had grown up with, and a boy called Chuck whom Nick had known from the music scene for some time. He was with the “Creeps,” and they had played concerts together. Chuck came to stay in Nick’s little house, to be with him night and day, and they began writing music together. But Nick was sleeping in Julie’s house then. He was in no shape to sleep alone in his cottage.
And in the midst of all that, in August, it was my birthday. And in spite of our differences, Tom gave me a spectacular surprise birthday party. All my favorite people were there, faces from my past and present, even my best friend from first grade, a Swiss woman who had flown out from New York for the evening. My children were there, too, and had kept the secret. The balloons mysteriously matched my gown, a thoughtful touch even I couldn’t have dreamed of. It was perfection. It was a magical evening, the only high point in an otherwise disastrous summer, but I loved it. And the only face missing was Nicky’s. I learned afterwards that Tom had done everything he could to get him there, but in spite of their mutual affection, and Nick’s love for me, Nick just couldn’t do it. He hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. He had only been home for a week then. Scaling Everest would have been easier for him at that point. Julie didn’t come either. She stayed home to keep an eye on Nicky. He was slowly struggling to his feet, enough so to become difficult at times. But his frustration was so great and his sorrow, that at times he got feisty. A week after Tom’s birthday party for me, on my real birthday, just as I was about to sit down to a lunch prepared for me by the younger kids, he called and announced that he was moving out of Julie’s, leaving at that precise moment. He had had enough of “her” bullshit. He rarely made accusations like that anymore. He had grown up too much to behave that way, but he was starting to get manic. And he was leaving.
For once I didn’t argue with him, reason, or cajole. I just told him he had to stay there and that was that. I also told him that I never asked him for anything and never had before, but this time I was “asking” him to stay, hung up quickly before he could argue with me, and sat down to lunch with the children, trying not to worry about him.
We were all going out to dinner that night, at one of our favorite restaurants, a funky diner. And Nick was to meet us. He finally seemed well enough to do so, or at least I thought he was. But that night, he called just before dinner, depressed again, and said he just couldn’t. He was too depressed to move, and I told him I understood completely. I did. I just wanted him to be all right. That would have been the best birthday gift of all. And that night after we got back from the restaurant, he sent me a beautiful letter by fax. It is the last one I ever got from him. One of many he wrote me, but possibly the best and the nicest. I will cherish it forever, and have read it so often to get me through these empty days, I nearly know it by heart now. It will probably keep me going for my entire lifetime, because the things he said to me recognize who I am, who I was to him, and him to me, and give me courage. It will always remind me of what a great kid Nick was, what a great son, and great human being. And his final gift to me, along with his love, was to remind me of what a great human being he thought I am. And it felt good to hear it. It was a last gift from Nicky, and a very sweet one.
8/14/97 11:41 p.m.
Dear Mom,
It’s still your birthday and I hope you had a wonderful time at dinner. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I’m not with you right now. I know you’ll be gracious as always and quell my guilty conscience with “the best birthday gift you can g
ive me is to get back on the right track,” etc. Whether you mean it or not, the fact still remains that I fucked up and I’m sitting across the Bay on your birthday. I should be there with you, in good shape, having a good time. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to say I’m sorry, but I’m saying it again. I’m sure you’re just as sick of hearing it as I am of saying it. I love you so much and I want so badly to make you proud of me. I was fucked up and out of my head for so long that for a while everyone thought that was the real me. Everybody thought I was crazy. Sometimes even me. I have grown so much in the last year, especially in the last seven months, that I almost feel like a new person. Like the real me that was buried under all that bullshit was finally let out. Julie saw it. My friends saw it. I know you saw it too. You stopped being so skittish around me, and we let each other into one another’s lives more than we ever have. I don’t know if it was unconscious or not, but you seemed to let down a guard that had been up for a long time. You saw the true, unobstructed me that had been masked by so much turmoil for years. You enjoyed my company again. I looked forward to seeing you. We didn’t fight. We called each other to see how we were doing.
I know I haven’t, but I really feel like I have blown all that. I’m afraid that you think I’m back to being a crazy little shit head and you’re going to step away again. Not that I’d blame you. I mean, who wants a crazy little shit head around anyway, right? And when I say “step away,” I don’t mean like you’re going to abandon me. I just fear that the closeness we have shared, due a lot to the good shape I’ve been in, will falter. I know you love me no matter what, and I love you no matter what, and even if you treated me like shit and called me names and stole from me and lied to me and ended up in institutions, I would still love you. I have done all those things to you and to myself and you have stood by me 100%. I know that our love for one another is totally unconditional. There is nothing you could do that would make me turn my back on you. You have demonstrated this consistently because I have done it all and you continue to be there. But regardless, I know I have let you down whether you admit it to me or not. And for that I am sorry.
For the better part of the last seven years I have been a huge pain in your ass (I almost made a typo there and wrote “a pain in your huge ass”), and now, slowly things seem to be improving. I just don’t want you to give up on me. I’m not going to bore you or myself with all that “I have a disease, I can’t help it” crap because you’ve heard it all before. Okay, great, I have a disease, I will always have an obsessive compulsion, but I know I can beat this thing because we both know people who fight it successfully every day, but not you or God or Julie is going to fix me. It has to come from me. I am so fucking sick and miserable of all of it. It sucks. But there is nobody to blame except for myself. Three weeks ago I was on top of the world. I was clean and sober and feeling great. I looked great, I was in a successful band, I was seeing the country, blah blah blah. Now, I look like shit. I feel even shittier. I have no band. I know it’s not the case, but I feel like a has-been. I know I have a million opportunities and I can get right back into being sober and successful, but right now at this very minute I just feel like shit. And it’s my own doing.
I’m not trying to get you to feel sorry for me. I can do that good enough for the both of us. I’m just trying to express everything I feel to you. Some birthday gift, huh? This letter is probably going to end up reading like the ravings of a lunatic, and if it does, I am very sorry. My brain is mush right now with regrets and hopes and a thousand other thoughts and feelings I can’t even begin to verbalize. I’m just trying to let you in. I also drank way too much coffee so I’m going at twice my normal thought rate.
You know, no matter who I knew I was going to hurt, it never mattered. I just didn’t give a fuck. I was going to leave today and then you called me and told me you had never asked me for anything in my life, but you were asking me not to leave. You didn’t even wait for my half-assed stuttering retort, you just left it at that and said good-bye. Well, I didn’t leave. I don’t know if that means anything, if it was you or God or me just giving up, but I’m tired of hurting you. I’m tired of hurting myself. I love you so much and I wanted to be there so much tonight, even after I was going to leave and decided to stay. I was even still contemplating going. I look like shit and I was ashamed and sick and sad, but I didn’t want to disappoint you.
In the end I figured you’d be more disappointed with a sick, sad, and ugly rendition of the Nick you love than with an absent one, so I stayed home. And you know what? I knew you’d understand. It might have taken a bit, but I knew you’d understand. I personally think the reason you understand me a lot of the time, aside from the fact that you are my mom, is because you’re a little crazy too. Maybe crazy on a different, higher plane, but a little cuckoo all the same. That’s why Julie gets it. She’s nuts! In a good way, of course. You can’t be as fantastically brilliant as we are without popping a couple minor screws loose. The human brain simply can’t take all that work.
I think you and Julie should write a book together on the art of tag-team mothering. You could dress up like professional tag-team wrestlers for the cover picture. Shit. I am just rambling now. I can never articulate exactly what I want to say so I end up sounding retarded. I’m sorry. I love you. We Traina children are the luckiest people on earth to have ended up with a mother like you. Me especially. I don’t think anybody would have kept faith in me like you have. One day I’ll show you. I promise. I will make you prouder than you ever thought you could be. Prouder than I am of you. I am proud of your success. I am proud of the way you’ve handled all the hardship you’ve dealt with. I am proud of the way you run that household. I am proud of what a wonderful mother you are (to your children and your staff). I am proud to be your son.
I am truly my mother’s son. So much of who I am, good and bad, has come from you. We have more in common than anyone would ever think. We both love small ugly dogs. We both love scrambled eggs. We both smoke too much. We are both romantics. We both have minds that could move mountains. We are perfectionists. We have hearts bigger than the sky. We both laugh when we get frustrated. Both of us have a fantastic fashion sense. We collect shoes. Our generosity has come back and bit both of us in the ass. We trust too much yet not enough. We both want to marry everyone we fall in love with. We hate nature (bugs, dirt, etc.). There is so much we have in common.
I hope you can make some kind of sense of this. Feel free to correct me on any misspellings or punctuation?⁄.” or grammar-type shit because I know it’s all gone downhill. It’s probably one big run-on sentence. It’s no longer your birthday now and I’m sorry I missed it. My heart was there even if my body wasn’t. Happy 34th birthday.
Love always,
Nick
I answered Nick immediately by fax that night, telling him again how proud of him I was, and how much I loved him. But neither Julie nor I could find the letter later.
The only thing that kept Nick going in those last grim days of August was the hope of starting a new band, with Chuck. He was beginning to catch the spark Julie had given him, and she continued to fan the flames as, night and day, he and Chuck wrote lyrics and music together. They called people they knew, rounded up other musicians, and by the end of August they had actually put something together. It was like watching a wounded Thoroughbred rise slowly to his feet, a little shaky at first, but proud and tall and graceful. And once he picked up speed, as always, he really started moving. He set up bookings, booked time in a recording studio, and rented a small studio to rehearse in.
As he had with Link 80, Nick drove his band members mercilessly. He was making up for lost time now, and the material he and Chuck had put together was terrific. I liked the songs and the music even better than his old ones. And everyone who heard them liked them. He called the new band “Knowledge.”
He was utterly remarkable, and they played their first concert on August thirtieth. He was nervous before they went on, and they
had already started taping their first recording for a new CD. It was a great night for him, a night of hope and new dreams, and finally, vindication. Link 80 came to see what the competition looked like, and after the performance, they asked Nick to come back. It was a moment that should have come sooner, but was destined not to. Nick thanked them and refused. He never went backward, he was locked into fast forward.
One of the songs he played with Knowledge that night was about his experience with Link 80, and made me so proud of him. He was one hell of a man, and as he had before, he taught me many things, about courage and hope, believing in yourself, and loving. If Nick could get back on his feet, with all the obstacles he faced and the hurdles he had to jump over, so could I, so could anyone. What right did I have to whine, if Nick could do it? And God, how I loved him for it. I was so damn proud of him, and still am. I always will be.
Still Standing
Now that I’ve been said and done
Fallen in the name of fun
I know I’m not the only one
But I’m still all by myself.
You overlooked my times of need
Laughed away thoughts of helping me.
I guess you thought I’d be all right
When I was the one on top.
Today I refuse to live in a hole
But a time not quite too long ago
I was wasting thoughts with my mind closed.
My heart was dead
My soul was broke.
You put off tragedy for another day.
His Bright Light Page 26