Will's Choice

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by Gail Griffith


  The big move came as Will was about to enter seventh grade. By then Bob had met and was living with Melissa, an energetic, warm, and engaging woman my age, who was thrilled at the prospect of partnering in raising the boys. I wholeheartedly approved. It was apparent that Melissa was a good match for Bob and I was earnestly delighted to see him happy.

  I am sure Melissa got more than she bargained for in those first few years: bringing surly teenage children into a nascent romance is fraught with challenges that only an expert animal trainer can appreciate.

  I put the boys on the plane for California and their new home in Palo Alto in late August 1996. I dreaded their departure all summer and, although I tried not to show it, I was anguished over the move. Now it was my turn to make the cross-country commute to parent-teacher nights and special events. More than once I considered pulling up stakes in Washington and following the boys, but I had no confidence in finding a job to rival my current situation, and by then I was involved in a serious relationship with the boys’ former soccer coach and longtime family friend, Jack Brady, whom I eventually married.

  But now I would be the one to miss, as Bob had, the everyday, commonplace bits of raising our children. Distance magnified the mundane and I felt rotten every time one of them had a tooth extracted or a sore throat, or scored in a triumphant basketball game. I wanted to be there. I was heartsick whenever I heard about a homework assignment that went missing or a new friend whose jokes were a riot. I just wanted to be there. The backdrop to my day-to-day existence was gone. I was no longer the “custodial” parent, and at times my diminished role made me feel shame and embarrassment.

  At ages twelve and fourteen respectively, Will and Max started the school year in a new state, in a new house, with a new adult in a parenting role: Melissa. She and Bob would marry three years hence, in 1999, but in September 1996, as happy as my children were to be living in California with their father, closer to cousins and grandparents, the move must have been a colossal adjustment for them.

  From the get-go, Max seemed to thrive. He was a freshman at Palo Alto High School and found it liberating to be attending a public school for the first time after years of parochial schooling. Palo Alto High had a diverse student body and Max quickly befriended a number of teenage musicians who shared his fervor for the punk rock scene. He identified with “straight edge” punks and adhered to their code, abstaining from drugs and alcohol; he became a vegan, shunning the consumption of all animal products; he refused to wear leather. He discontinued playing sports and instead expended that same energy on his music. And true to the perfectionist he was, he always maintained top grades in school. In a nutshell, Max carved out a persona that anchored him through the remainder of his adolescence, even though others in his midst floundered.

  On the other hand, Will’s first year at Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto was a test for all of us. I would fly out to California to participate in the kids’ school activities on a regular basis. On our first parent-teacher night, Bob, Melissa, and I trooped off, ready to introduce ourselves as the odd trio we were—a copasetic combo of ex-husband, partner, and ex-wife. We marveled at the offerings unveiled by an impressive teaching staff at the affluent Palo Alto public school.

  Will said he liked it “okay” but for the first time in his life he was “the new kid” he wasn’t used to having to put an effort into making friends. His network of friendships in Washington had come automatically with the territory of Holy Trinity Elementary School and his soccer buddies. This was a radical adjustment for him.

  Will appeared to be adjusting to the home life sufficiently well. He spent evenings playing board games with Bob and Melissa and he became a devoted companion to Melissa’s dog, Buster. But for the first time in his young life, he had no interest in joining a sports team and spent many weekends hanging around with family or by himself, in lieu of friends.

  In December 1996 Will had just turned thirteen, a particularly awkward and transitional time for any adolescent. Midway through the seventh grade, small signs of anxiety began to crop up. Will now said he hated his school in Palo Alto, his grades were erratic, and he hadn’t made many solid friends. For Will, who’d grown up in the ethnically and economically diverse urban setting of Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, California, was, by contrast, rarefied air. After a rather smooth beginning, even Max, ever forthright, declared, “This town lacks compassion!” which we understood to mean that Palo Alto’s showy affluence and stratified demographics were at odds with his notion of what city living should be like.

  Bob and Melissa also missed life in a larger urban setting, and, with the boys’ enthusiastic endorsement, they moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco before the beginning of the next school year, even though it meant relocating both kids to new schools yet again.

  In San Francisco, both boys—now aged fourteen and sixteen—enrolled in ethnically diverse, urban Catholic schools, which resembled more closely the environment they had grown up with in Washington. In the fall of 1997, Will started eighth grade at a small parochial middle school in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood. But Will would have to make yet another school change after eighth grade, to the high school Max attended, Sacred Heart, a large coeducational Catholic school, with a heavy emphasis on academic achievement and a diverse student body, in the heart of downtown San Francisco.

  By the time Will was in the ninth grade, his freshman year at Sacred Heart, we thought that he had made the transition to high school relatively well, although there were times when he appeared adrift and unhappy. Was it normal teenage angst or something much darker? He resumed his interest in playing sports and joined the junior varsity basketball team, where he picked up new friends quickly. But each semester was a crapshoot. One quarter he produced three A’s and three F’s—the F’s in the easy stuff. Once again, we chided him for lack of organization and for failing to be forthcoming about the demands of his courses.

  Both boys spent Christmas vacation, spring break, and summer vacations in Washington with me. At the end of his summer vacation in 1999, Will cautiously probed a “what if” one evening as we were on our way to a Chinese restaurant for a farewell dinner.

  “Do you think, if I wanted to, I could get into Gonzaga? I mean, if I wanted to, do you think I could live here in Washington and finish high school here? I know not this year, but maybe next year?”

  My heart stopped.

  I missed my kids terribly. Nothing would have pleased me more, as a mother, than to have Will back in Washington. Jack welcomed the idea; Will’s stepbrother, John, was overjoyed at the prospect. But revisiting the plan for the boys’ residence wasn’t the resolution Bob and I had struck. To reconsider our decision to move the boys in the first place would raise hackles and prompt a fissure in the pleasant and relatively easy accord between us.

  “Why would you want to move back here, Will? I thought you pretty much liked Sacred Heart and living in the city. And I know you’re happy to be around your cousins.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t move. Maybe I just want to think about it. Maybe I just need a change.” I could see his mental wheels turning. We needed time to let this notion play out, to see where it would take us.

  “Well, you bet, I would welcome you back if you wanted to transfer here, but we need to figure out if that’s really a good idea—you’ve already changed schools a couple of times, and Dad would be really sorry to see you move. He wouldn’t want you to move. And you don’t really want to be apart from Max.”

  “Yeah, I know, but Max is going to be out of the house next year. He’ll go to college and I’ll be the only one at home and if I come here, John’s at Gonzaga and all of my friends are there, too.”

  “Well, sweetie, we can keep talking about it, but let’s go slow and see how you feel later in the year.”

  What did Will mean by, “I just need a change”?

  With trepidation, I broached the subject with Bob in early fall. He was understandably upset and waite
d for Will to bring the subject up himself. He wanted to hear Will’s reasons firsthand. Bob’s objections to a move for Will were not groundless: Why change schools again? Wasn’t Will finally settling into a routine, getting his academics together? Hadn’t he connected with a good group of kids?

  Will had been required to adjust on a number of fronts: to a new stepmother who held strong views about disciplining teenagers and about what constituted acceptable adolescent behavior (which, for the most part, I endorsed and supported); to my role as the “noncustodial parent” to our homes at opposite ends of the country; and to leaving his childhood friends, though he had made new ones. And finally he seemed to have come to terms with the fact that his parents were irrevocably separated and reattached to new partners—with all that entailed—and he accepted it without demonstrable or obvious signs of discomfort or disapproval. By all counts, he looked to be a well-adjusted kid. At least that’s what I wanted to believe.

  I tried to hold back as the conversation about a possible move unfolded; to lobby for his relocation would have been unfair to Will—and to Bob—but I admit it was hard not to be biased. Selfishly, I wanted Will to spend the last two years of high school in Washington with me. It would be the last time I would have a child in the house, to love close at hand and to parent. Of course, Bob felt the same, only worse. I’m sure he felt that this development was, in some measure, a referendum on his new household. I don’t believe it was. In hindsight, I think Will had already begun to slide into depression. “I just need a change.” (Translation: “I need help.”)

  Will made out the application for admission to Gonzaga High School in Washington on his own, without the help of either parent. I thought it would be a test of his determination to move if he followed through with the application process, and we set admission to Gonzaga as a condition for changing households.

  Will was accepted at Gonzaga as a junior transfer for the fall of 2000. I pressured Bob to approve of the move.

  “Will’s never asked us for anything in his life. He’s always been a good sport and gone along with the plans we made for him. He didn’t have a say in the previous moves, or our divorce or choice of new partners. I think we need to let him do this, Bob.”

  Bob was anguished, but he relented and Will closed out his sophomore year at Sacred Heart, bidding good-bye once more to school and friends.

  In mid-August 2000, Bob and Will made a father-son cross-country drive, checking out national parks and giving Will, now sixteen years old and road legal, a chance at the wheel for miles on end. The two of them arrived at our Dupont Circle townhouse in downtown Washington, D.C., with a carload of valuable teen possessions and a bag full of dirty laundry. Jack and I had married the year before, so John and Will were now officially stepbrothers. John and Jack were thrilled to have Will back and I was over the moon. John was entering his senior year at Gonzaga, so he and Will would be attending school together. The house quickly filled up with boys, Will’s friends from before and John’s high school buddies. Ours was a funky testosterone-laden household, but, God, I couldn’t have been happier.

  A few days before Labor Day in August 2000, Gonzaga’s semester began. Will met with his guidance counselor, Bill Wilson, and signed up for a strenuous curriculum, including two advanced placement classes.

  Off the two boys went on the first day of classes, teasing and joshing like sixth graders. But Will came home with a boatload of books looking exhausted and discouraged.

  “Oh dear, sweetie, what’s the matter?” He collapsed, long limbs sprawled out on the couch, eyes closed.

  “Nothing.”

  “You look really tired…or something.” I was digging.

  “No, I’m okay,” was all he offered.

  Something in his expression that afternoon—an element beyond sad—and a disconcerting heaviness about his movements seemed like a harbinger of things to come. I had a sinking feeling: this wasn’t what I expected.

  By September, Will’s school year got underway. But as summer turned to fall, I became increasingly anxious about his mood. Was his decision to move back to the East Coast really based on simply “needing a change” or was it something darker, more urgent? Mother’s intuition: I couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. My instincts told me that Will was battling a secret demon.

  I decided to confess my fears to Dr. Salerian. I told him that I was wracked by visions of improbable accidents involving Will: I worried that he might be crushed by a structural beam at the construction site at Gonzaga or that he might be shot in a road rage accident.

  Dr. Salerian reassured me, “It is normal to feel anxious about a child in the middle of a transition. What you’re feeling isn’t out of the ordinary. You just have to get used to having him back with you full-time.” I wanted to believe him.

  By the time the first quarter was over in early October, Will was excelling in school and had organized a CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) basketball team with his friends. He received high honors for his first semester’s grades and he was flirting with a girl, Megan Mathews, a sophomore at a public school in Silver Spring, whom he had met through his cousin Stephanie. By Halloween, he and Megan were a regular item.

  Will was two years older than Megan, and since he was able to drive, he held the allure of “the cool older guy from Gonzaga with a driver’s license.” On the surface, Megan seemed outgoing and bright. She had been elected to participate in an intense communication arts program offered by her public high school. Will’s understated charm and reserve most likely drew her to him and challenged her to draw him out. I think he was looking for someone he could confide in. There began a relationship of late-night phone calls, visits between her house and ours, huddling together on the living room couch watching videos, and weekend nights out for bowling or movies. Pretty routine stuff.

  But around Thanksgiving Will complained that he was tired all of the time. He had difficulty getting out of bed in the morning and an even harder time falling asleep at night. I often found him talking on the phone, presumably to Megan, as late as 1:00 AM; I insisted that he get off the phone and get some sleep. Sometimes we heard him wandering around the house at 4:00 AM. He was losing weight and claimed he had little appetite. He was increasingly withdrawn and his humor had a bitter, fatalistic edge to it. What was going on? Was he just “transitioning”?

  By the time his fall semester was winding down, Will was falling off the edge. On a Sunday evening in early December 2000, I found him lying facedown on his bed, schoolbooks and papers in messy piles all around him. He had been crying.

  “What on earth’s wrong, Will?”

  “I just can’t do this anymore,” he said, in a tone anguished and deadened. He sounded like an ancient tormented soul. “It’s just hopeless.” He began to sob.

  How could I have allowed this to go on for so long without recognizing it for what it was? All the warning signs were there. (“How could this happen? Not Will. Not the easygoing, cheerful kid.”) He had been knocked flat by clinical depression. I, of all people, should have known. Like a recurring nightmare, this was my illness, my depression, making its unholy imprint on my precious child.

  “Will, we’re going to get you some help, buddy. I think you’re depressed. We’re going to fix this. Right away. I promise.” I lay down next to him and cried with him. I was wracked with fear and guilt, but I knew with steadfast clarity what needed to be done.

  First thing Monday morning, I took him to see Dr. Salerian, to assess Will’s situation. Will was diagnosed with major depressive disorder on December 11, 2000, four days after his seventeenth birthday.

  And so it began: medication, therapy, and what we believed to be an aggressive effort to root out the disease. Will went to the West Coast to visit family during the break and we hoped to see signs of improvement when he returned. Soon after New Year’s 2001, he started his second semester at Gonzaga, but by mid-January it was evident that he was fading further from our grasp.<
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  By this time, Will’s relationship with Megan was intense and secretive. They spent hours in deep, brooding telephone conversations; I suspect they were trying to console each other, and Will confided to me that “Megan’s got some issues with depression herself. She’s taking meds and stuff.”

  It is hardly surprising that the two of them were attracted to each other. Educators and clinicians alike can attest that teens with vulnerabilities, illness, and dysfunction are drawn to each other with uncanny magnetism. Maybe they offer each other a safe haven of sorts, consumed as they are with the other’s pain.

  Late one night in mid-January, Will, anguished and in obvious pain, confided to me he wanted to “end it all.” The next day I called Dr. Salerian. He recommended immediate hospitalization, and Will, too ragged and broken to fight, gave in.

  January 2001: Salerian practiced out of the Psychiatric Institute of Washington, where he also served as medical director. Although the hospital had an adolescent wing, Dr. Salerian declined to place Will there, describing it as “too dangerous, too dysfunctional.” The adolescent unit housed kids whose issues were, for the most part, the result of behavioral problems, substance abuse, physical abuse, or neglect; about half were wards of the court—abandoned by a miserably inadequate health care system or families without resources to care for them. Dr. Salerian convinced me that Will belonged instead on the Mood Disorders Unit.

  “Look, Gail”—Salerian tried to comfort me the day of Will’s admission—“I want him here on my unit, where I can keep close watch on him. I will care for him as though he were my own son.” A consolation of sorts.

  I drove Will to the hospital midmorning on Tuesday, January 16. It was a crystalline winter’s day. We were winding our way through Rock Creek Park, patches of old snow snaked between tree trunks.

 

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