There is an old saying “It takes a village to raise a child”. I have a pretty darn good village. In my village we had the police, the prosecuting attorney, high school principal, and many close friends try to help us out with Kai. I’m not sure what others thought as we tried to figure out what was going on with Kai but I’m going to guess they thought of him as spoiled and just a rotten kid. Hubby and I tried all kinds of different ways to deal with Kai. Tough love, had him arrested twice, spent time in juvenile detention. committed him to spend time in a mental hospital for teens, big waste of time and $50,000.00. It is mind boggling how expensive a two week psych stay costs!
He was failing miserably at school. We were just praying he graduated, if he didn’t graduate what would he do then? The school principal and counselor spent countless hours trying to get Kai through school. I remember one morning Kai refused to go to school. There was no convincing him to go so I texted the principal and here he comes to the house to drag the boy by his shirt collar to school. God Kai hated school. Not just because he struggled with education but he claimed he was bullied at school. I’m not going to deny that probably happened but he had so many friends and was never considered a loner at school. Being called a fag (according to Kai) by upperclassmen really upset me, just because he wasn’t a “redneck” and liked skinny jeans and did fun stuff with his hair. Kai definitely marched to his own tune. All the kids in his class were great to him and he never lacked the company of the girls. Kai preferred to hang out with his friends that were not in school, older kids. Hubby always made it clear to these older friends we would not tolerate them giving him booze, cigarettes, or drugs and if we found out about it we would not hesitate to come down hard on them.
I’m just going to guess, but I feel my village had a big realization that our struggles were real and that they had no idea how truly troubled and inpain Kai was. There was pain and anger in our home 24/7. If we had just one dayof nothing bad or emotional happen it was such a relief. Most days I woke upwith the attitude of “what will it be today”? I still have insomnia to this day. I could never sleep very good knowing he would sneak out or have a bad texting session with a friend or girlfriend and try to hurt himself. If I heard him come down the stairs I would get up to see what he was up to. Never could trust the boy. Well the night of April 5th when I heard him comedown the stairs I made the bad decision to let him be because he was just getting a drink of water or a snack. No, he came down stairs to end his life.The one time I decided to let him be. I will always punish myself for that. But he had such a good day that Friday I just knew he was fine and happy. But instead he was having a texting fight with a girl so he decided to go to the garage and get into the booze in the freezer. The freezer that we normally had locked up, but not this time. Nope, not this time.
Anyway, for me, knowing that I would bury my son one day, my village had a “wow”,“no way”, “I can’t believe it”, or “oh my God” moment on the day he died. All judgments and decisions about Kai all went away because they really had no idea what was going on. Our family and close friends knew more, but not nearly as much as I knew. Hubby was even kept in the dark about a lot of things Kai and I had been through. I felt if I kept all those burdens hubby would be in a better place, he struggled with Kai so much. So our village rallied to do what they could to be there for us. Even the most judgmental of them. I forgave all bad thoughts and feelings of those that just had no idea what was truly happening. But since I’m talking about it it’s obvious it affected me in some way. I still love my village and am very grateful for all it had done for me, and still does for me and my family, people have moved on but they haven’t forgotten.
On the anniversary of his passing everyone still remembers and will always send their prayers our way. I miss him, I miss him so much.