June 2009

It’s been a busy month. I’ve sent off an edited manuscript of the Cannabis Diaries to the publisher, and now need only to write the conclusion which will deal with us taking baby steps to have him back in our lives. Will has written the foreword to the book, so it’s all coming together. And as a family so are we. It’s been two years since William has lived at home, and just over 18 months ago since we let him go into freefall and regrouped as a family. As I’ve said many times before the decision to exclude him has been the right one for all of us, and I include him in that too.

Our middle son Jack is now 19 and on a three month trip to the US and Canada, with two friends he has known most of his life. He’s phoned a couple of times, and sounded very grown up, grounded and calm. He’s turned out to be such a lovely young man. As one of my colleagues said to me after she met him ‘He’s absolutely great. How could anyone say that you and Guy are bad parents?’ She was referring to some of the comments I’ve received through the web-site.

Alex is 15, in year 10 at his new school, and doing a week’s work experience at his old primary school, and enjoying being there. He is now six foot four, slim and very happy. His new co-ed school has worked out well, hence the transformation as he was able to begin again and ‘be himself’ as he had said to us when he finally gave into the idea of moving schools.

Lily, our cocker spaniel, is now two, and such a joy to be around. She has helped us all heal these past two years, and continues to do so.

William came to home this week to see his grandmother Caroline, who is now in her early eighties and has been staying with us for the past ten days. She fell and broke her right arm rushing for a bus on her way to the station to get a train. She had arranged to meet William in London; she had a bag of clothes he had left at her house when he was last there. She rang us from the hospital, and Guy literally dropped everything to drive down to the hospital to look after her. He brought her back that night, and she has been with us ever since. Her face was badly bruised too, and she had a nasty gash above her eye. She fell in the street a couple of years ago too. We told her then that she must slow down. ‘You make no allowances for age, mum’ Guy said to her.

I was surprised then to hear her say, nodding – ‘It’s pride before a fall you know. I’d been doing all my accounts, ticking off my jobs, and feeling very pleased with myself. Then I fell’.

I was astounded to hear such insightful comments.

I took the opportunity to talk to her about how competitive she can be.

‘I think when there’s no one else to be in competition with you talk to yourself competitively, and set yourself tasks and time-limits. You need to slow down though, or you will fall again.’ It took a lot of courage to say that, she is quite frightening at times. You never know quite what she is going to say and often begins self-praising which I find debilitating.

She agreed with me about slowing down, though, and said she’d think about that. One of the first things she said to Guy when he located her in A and E this time was ‘Debra told me to slow down.’ So, she had remembered. I was pleased.

We have hardly seen each other these past few months. I gave up trying to be friends. I’ve been hurt over the years by her attempts to have Will reconciled with us, knowing that she wasn’t considering all of us in this attempt. Guy and I have both been especially bemused by her attitude especially as we have two other children here, her grandchildren, whose childhoods were in danger of being damaged irrevocably by the behaviour of their brother. We were not going to be dragged into Will’s hell with him, and Guy and I both knew that his family disapproved of our decision to exclude him, and then to distance ourselves completely from him for a year.

Friends have said to both Guy and me over the years, when we muse about the lack of comprehension from his family, that unless you’ve experienced it you can’t imagine what it must be like to live with drug addiction. Then you need to use more imagination, is my internal response, but I nod and say that’s probably right.

With William and Caroline at our place this week, I realised that this is the first time we have all been together in the house for years. Alex, smiling, later commented that it took an accident to bring us all together, as he came in with the Monopoly board and told us all we should play, which we did. He had already played Scrabble that afternoon with his grandmother, echoes of what they used to do whilst at his grandparents’ house during childhood holidays there. We ate in the garden that evening, the weather has been glorious, and it was still warm as the day ended. Will came with me to the supermarket that we haven’t been to together since our many visits there, the two of us, when he was in b and b, and then in a rented house close by. We bought food for a barbecue and Will cooked for everyone.

I wasn’t there when Will arrived. He had told me the day before that he would almost certainly be over to see us his grandmother, and us, but hadn’t given a time. He still rarely talks to his father. If he rings the house he almost always asks to be put on to me. This saddens me, and I know that it hurts Guy. Two weeks ago Guy had rung Will to ask if he wanted to meet up the day that Caroline fell. Will had said that he was due to meet his grandmother that Saturday, and Guy had invited himself along to see them both. Killing two birds. He was getting ready to go when the call came from the hospital.

Guy was driving me to the station to get a train when I saw Will in the street, near the station, en route to our house. I was going up to Harley Street to meet two people with whom I may begin working soon, and was running late. I heard a voice call out ‘Hey!’ as we were driving along. Looking through the driver’s window to my right, in the direction of the voice, I saw William standing still in the street, his hand high in the air waving to us, beaming, beanie hat on head.

‘Will!’ I cried out, and then heard my own voice and wondered why it sounded so excited. That invisible umbilical cord again. Okay, just calm down.

‘Right, I better get back and lock the doors upstairs straight away.’ Guy said, quietly. Going into close focus on Guy then I could tell he was fine about that, just resigned to another job. How far he had come; you could never say that Guy was ever stuck. He’s had to negotiate so many changes these past years, and is now in a very happy, contented place. For all of us there has been a grieving period which is now over.

Guy had been working at home so he could look after his mother, and was trying to do both things well – a precarious balance. Will had promised he would be over earlier in the week, when Grandma had first arrived, but had cancelled. Guy had spent half an hour collecting up cheque books, jewellery and ps3 games to lock away, he said. I was out that day too. Ironically, the day after Caroline arrived I had gone down to where she lived in Surrey. I had been asked to give an interview for Radio Home Counties, about the Cannabis Diaries, the whole thing was set up weeks ago. And now here we were changing places. I wondered what that could mean, not totally believing in chance. She is also sleeping in the little attic room at the top of the house I use as a study. That was curious too. After making the bed up, (there is a double bed in this room which is why she is up there, needing more space due to broken limbs – normally she sleeps in the single bed in the study), I began looking round the room. I tidied away things I believe she may not approve of, like my various packs of angel and goddess cards, crystals, nag champa and incense holders – some of the contents of my ‘tool box’ that I’ve created over the years to help me in every aspect of my life. Later I went up there to find a file I’d forgotten and saw her clothes hanging in the little wardrobe up in the attic room, next to jackets and dresses of mine that I can’t fit into our wardrobe in our room. An odd juxtaposition given the distance that there has been between us these past years.

Alex remarked on how odd it was that I was going down to her town and she was coming here. We were both in each other’s space he said.

Walking round the town in the bright sunshine after the interview, I tried to tune in to what it must be like to have lived there most of your life. Married in their very early twenties, Guy’s parents, who were both Londoners, had moved down to Guildford after the war looking for an attractive large town where they could settle. It had been an ‘uneventful childhood’ as Guy said to me once. ‘How do you mean?’ I said.

‘In the sense that nothing eventful happened’ he had said. ‘Just the opposite to yours. As Oscar Wilde wrote – to lose one parent is unfortunate but to lose two is downright careless. Crikey Deb, yours and your sister’s lives are like something out of Dickens. But both of you are so strong, though, you have to be to have got through it all.’

He looked at me then in the way I love, with care and surprise on his face, and joy in his eyes. I tell him I’m not sure about the strong thing, but yes we got through.

I wonder now whether Guy’s mother must be wondering now whether it is my legacy that Will has gone off the rails. She had once mentioned to Guy that there were no mental problems in her family, and that it must be on ‘my side’. Guy swallowed hard and then reminded her about two maiden aunts who had not exactly lived life at ground level, and she was quiet then. She hadn’t mentioned cannabis, but Guy did then.

A friend of mine had also once said to me, that Will may have inherited my father’s genes (he had committed suicide as you will know if you have stayed with me during this diary journey). I had calmly changed the subject then, because I just do not believe that anything Des did could be inherited. Having researched his life and death, I am convinced that his entire nervous system had become so wrangled by his RAF bombing experiences. Now it is called ‘post traumatic stress disorder’. Then it was kept at bay by a nice cup of tea, and someone telling you to get on with your life, and how lucky you were to be alive.

‘Yes, of course, drop me here then.’ I say, as Guy talks about locking things away. He’s right, we may never trust Will again. Guy keeps driving though until we get to the station. He turns to kiss me goodbye.

‘Crumbs, Will and my mother at the same time, you’re in the right place this afternoon. Don’t hurry back’ he jokes.

I smile and wonder when we are going to get some peace in our lives. But that’s not fair, we do have a very peaceful life since we made the heart-wrenching decision to let Will go. Our lives are very busy, that’s all.

There seems to be a coming together of us all though. Caroline hasn’t mentioned my work, the campaign, the media appearances, the charity, once during the past two years. It has all been ignored. When I was at an anti-drugs conference in Romania last year, giving a speech, she had rung. When Guy had told her where I was, and that I was speaking at an international conference she had said ‘Oh, dear’.

‘What do you mean ‘oh, dear’?’ he had said to her, always quick to defend me.

‘Oh, just that it might be too much for her, with the family and all.’

At Christmas Alex had been alone with her in our house, while we were out, and had been talking about a recent interview I’d given for radio or tv. Caroline had said that it was ‘something to fill your mother’s life now you boys are growing up.’ Alex reported this to me, looking down as he spoke, and then up at me to look in my eyes and tell me how little his grandmother understands about what we’ve all been through. I know he is proud of what I have been trying to do. We have all been through so much, but it’s made us close and anchored us in a way that may not have happened had we not had the experience.

I think this has come through to Caroline these past ten days. Being vulnerable, with her right arm in a sling, and bruises on her face, maybe there has been an acceptance of what has happened. She has asked about my work, wanting to see some of the cuttings. She has been agreeing with me about the need to protect children from drugs. She seems genuinely moved by stories I have told her about the suffering of families. As Guy said to me yesterday:

‘Maybe she’s realised that as Jonathan Myerson said to us that day ‘we’re quite nice people really’’ (Two years ago, over supper one evening, we had been talking with Jon and Julie Myerson about our struggles with our cannabis-addicted children, and how many criticisms were thrown at us.)

I’ve been angry with her these past two years for not supporting us, but I don’t think she knew how. Her default mechanism is that families must stick together, despite everything, that it is a child’s birthright to live at home. This is what she learnt as a child, and carried that lesson with her, even when it meant that its application was destructive and divisive. We have been telling her that William needed to take responsibility for his behaviour, and ultimately for his own life. She witnessed, this week, the relationship we still have with our son, that we can still welcome him back home but need also to protect ourselves and our property.

The trust may never return, I don’t know. But it was good to see him. It occurred to me the other day that I have conversations with him that I can’t have with anyone else. I told this to Caroline when she began telling me how glad she was to see Will reunited with his family, and enjoying family time here with us. She said then something that is little short of a miracle, given how much I know she adores William. ‘He’s very in touch with his feminine side. He’s very like you, I think’ she said, kindly.

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