The moon was out all day. A restless wind howled in the distance and I waited while it made its way toward me. Over the far hills it rushed, bending the poor birch trees already hard at work, holding snow in such pretty clumps of white on its branches. Cold, cold air made me stiff and tense. I waited. When the wind finally swirled around me, twisting my hair into tangles and lashing at my face, it was as terrible as cold could be. I peeked at the moon. The sun didn’t matter that day.

My telephone rang last night. It was a friend asking if she could come over to show me something she’d written seven years ago. I lit the fire and waited for her.

When she arrived we hugged each other, our soft bellies squished up between us.

“I could not have written this,” she said. It was a work of prose poetry and it was about her son’s descent into the living hells of bipolar disorder, drug abuse, and his failed quests to achieve recovery. He died, almost nine years ago, by his own hand.

Had I been all alone after reading the poem, I would have sat still, stunned, unable to think or speak–not wanting to do either, anyway. I only wanted to cry for the rest of my life. It’s true that the work has added power for me, because I knew her son and because I know her and because I know her husband and I know her youngest son, who was very good friends with my son when they were young boys. After I read the prose poem, I handed it to my husband who left the room to read it. When he returned, there weren’t just three of us sitting around the fire–there were four. My friend’s son settled in, too–his spirit freed. Though we knew a lot about his life and the circumstances of his death, now we knew more.

My friend is sure her son is channeling her. She believes she is being called, by him, to help families as they try everything to save loved ones who suffer with mental disorders and addictions. My friend tried everything to help her son.

“Is the writing good enough?” My friend asked. “Do you think I can use this to help people.”

And I answered her, not as a writer, but as a mother. I told her what she already knows, that her relationship with her son has evolved to a place she hoped and hoped for, a place where the darkest days of anguish would be finished. It didn’t happen the way we all wanted it to happen–no mother wants to have a relationship with a child from beyond the grave–but she is now in a place to help others, and her son is joining her. They are working together from a world of deeply spiritual love that only a mother and a child can know.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” My friend said. “But he won’t leave me alone. He keeps encouraging me. My mind races and races and won’t stop.”

I reminded her that she has been practicing and walking through the motions for a long time–she forgets how she has spent the last several years–stopping by my house, walking through my gardens, telling me everything. Each year, the remembered pain of her son’s life does not abate, and her self-criticism over what else she could have done to save him remains the glimmer of hope that inspires her to reach out and perhaps save another family.

I discovered, a long time ago, the point of WHAT ELSE in life. After the counselors, the prescription drugs, the treatment centers, the retreats, the priests–after all of that doesn’t work,  what else is there to do? Sometimes, there is nothing else. The pain is so insurmountable, the disease is so toxic, the injury is so grave–there is only the grace of death.

But sometimes, the what else is the unprofessional, un-clinical, unscientific, imperfect, untrained, nonjudgmental, unrestrained excursion into the heart of another human being. My friend knows how judgmental she used to be. It makes her heartsick to recall how she denied the depth of her son’s despair and dangerous behaviors. I could only nod my head, recalling all the things I believed until my own experiences changed–and continue to change–the ways I process and interpret the confusions of what it means to be human.

I began this week talking with another friend whose son took his own life almost three years ago. I am thinking of a friend today who is in court battling to keep her young daughter safe from a father dangerously addicted to alcohol. Not many of us avoid adversity.

“So you think the writing is good enough.” My friend said, holding the papers inscribed with the holy poem. “I just don’t know if I could tell the story and get through reading this to people who need to hear it.”

“Then call me.” I said. “I’ll go with you, whenever and wherever you are led to help other families.”

My friend’s face lit up. “You will?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go, too.” My husband said.

The last times my husband and I visited with my friend’s son, he was doing some painting work for us. Every now and then he’d take a break with my husband for a few guitar lessons. He was a brilliant, beautiful boy then, almost in high school. Just a boy.

After my friend left, my husband and I cried for the rest of the night–not even in our dreams was our shared grief spared.