Katherine James - A Prayer for Orion: A Sons Addiction and a Mothers Love

THIS IS THE WAY it happened, or at least the way Rick told me it happened. Sweetboy was nowhere around. I was in the kitchen. Waylen and Rick were in the breezeway sitting in the white Adirondack chairs. Theyre not the traditional Adirondack chairstheyre more square than rounded. There are four of them. Rick was sitting across from Waylen, who wore aviator sunglasses so you couldnt see his eyes, only yourself, and his curly, blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His thin and large knuckled hands were clasped in front of him. Rick told him that God wanted to help him and then they prayed together, and even though he couldnt see Waylens eyes because of the sunglasses, when he looked back up Rick saw a tear run down Waylens cheek. Thats what he told me and thats what I remember, like I was sitting there with themor to be more precise, I was Ricklooking at that tear, and behind Waylen was the yard and the different patterns of shade from the huge maple trees making their blue patches on the grass.

After that, every time I saw Waylen or talked to him I thought of the tear. As far as I was concerned it was on his face for good. Three years after that tear first appeared Waylen was dead of an overdose and his best friend, Stephan, was sitting next to his dead body in the hospital, never having seen anyone dead before, sitting there and praying because you never know, wasnt it about time for another Lazarus? And then Stephan was sitting there and watching Waylens mother come through the door having just arrived and seeing her son and crumpling up, like her own body was finished with this life thing. Stephan took a picture of Waylen dead in the hospital and asked me if I wanted to see it. I said no. I wanted to remember the tear.

I know what it feels like to have your body crumple up like its finished with this life thing. Like all of a sudden you realize that the only thing that had been keeping you alive was your son, and when you think hes gone your body tries so hard to die too, but it wont, so thats the most painful thing, that you cant get your own body to freaking die and you dont have any choice but to live. Theres nothing you can do. Hes dead and you want to be, but youre not.

Years ago I used to look at Orions Belt through the enormous floor-to-ceiling bay window with individual glass panes in our living room and pray for our children: Sophie, Jules, and Sweetboy. The window leaks heat like breath through a cold fist, but I would stand there at night where I could see the stars and align Orions Belt into one rectangular pane by shifting where I stood. I had a favorite pane that I liked to view them through, the second row from the topwhen I stood just right, the stars went from lower left to upper right: Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka. Those are their names. Mintaka, that last star. Like the bitter end of a tightened belt.

It was in our living room with the bay window that I thought we might lose Sweetboy and called the police. Sophie, our oldest, had been married the previous month and Sweetboy had helped to string the lights and fix up the backyardhed looked so handsome in his suit with his crisp white shirt and auburn hair cut short and other than carrying a red energy drink around with him that ended up in all the photos, hed looked like the perfect groomsman. Jules had flown in from San Francisco and sang Wreckless Erics Whole Wide World at the reception.

Seven months earlier Sweetboy had told us hed started doing hard drugs and wanted to stop so wed begun testing him. Hed consistently tested negative so eventually we stopped testing him altogether. We were like parents at a PTA meeting sitting in back of the high school auditorium, nodding our heads in agreement while the principal lectures on about how bad the drug problem is, nodding because our own kid had done them and we knew how serious the problem was. But the truth was, although we couldnt know it yet, that one word,