One Heart at a Time Read online

  We made our way down near the front of the sanctuary so we could see and hear the kids perform. Their director gave a brief message and then the music began. Instantly I was transported ten thousand miles away to the village I worked in. The costumes and the music lifted me out of the church and suddenly I felt like I was back in Ghana, caring for sick children and trying to educate young mothers. My two daughters, Angel and Blessing, who had been home in the US for only two years, were so excited they could not sit still. Blessing was up and dancing in the aisle, it was all I could do to keep her from running up on the stage to join them! Shaylah, Zack, and Thomas were watching and swaying to the drums, clapping after each song and encouraging Blessing and Angel to dance their hearts out. The service was far too short in our opinion, we could have listened for hours to the rhythmic beats and chanted choruses.

  After the service ended I took Angel and Blessing to meet some of the young performers and talked with my friend who’d called to tell me about the performance. Paul left before me and took some of the kids back to the farm. The director of the choir, a middle-aged man from somewhere in the Midwest approached me with a broad grin, grabbed my hand and started to thank me. At first I assumed he was a listener who found out I was the woman on the radio, and I smiled uncomfortably. But he wasn’t a listener, he was an enthusiastic choir director who pumped my arm as he exclaimed: “Thank you! Thank you! We will be happy to come to the farm for lunch.” I tilted my head to one side and said, “Excuse me?”

  “Your son, the little boy in the green shirt just told me you have a huge farm with lots of goats and cows and then he invited me to bring the choir to lunch. Normally the church sponsors a lunch for us at the cafeteria or a local restaurant, but your pastor is not here today. I guess no one thought about how we would feed the children.”

  His enthusiastic smile was met with my bewildered expression, and just as I was about to explain that my house was filled with ski gear and my fridge was all but empty, Zack appeared by my side. He put his arms around me and said “Mom, I told him what a good cook you are and how you feed all the orphans in Africa, can they come home and have lunch with us?” His impish face was absolutely adorable, and his smile did to me what it always did to me, made me absolutely incapable of saying anything but “yes…”

  Thirty children, eight adult chaperones, plus the director and his wife. Forty guests along with my own household of ten. My mind raced into action. I hurriedly called my then fiancé, Paul, and asked him for help. He had dropped our teenage girls off at the farm and gone to his apartment. He agreed to rush back to the farm and start picking up skis and snowboards. I called two of my adult children, Tangi and her brother Trey Jerome, who lived in the area and asked them to meet me at the church. I gave them cash and dispatched them to Walmart to buy paper plates, cups, and plastic silverware, along with rice, beans, milk, juice, spaghetti, hot dogs, and buns. Many, many hot dogs! I ordered a dozen pizzas, grabbed my youngest kids, gave the director the farm address and directions and flew out the door!

  When I got home, the skis, snowboards, and damp gloves had all been snatched up and tossed in bins, the dirty dishes in the sink were shoved in the dishwasher, and a huge pot of water was already on the stove and beginning to boil. Paul started frying up sausage and hamburger for spaghetti sauce, I rinsed an entire large bag of rice (assuming the kids would enjoy it as much as my African daughters did), and tried to straighten up the bathrooms and the dining room. Within half an hour the bus arrived, and thirty children between the ages of five and eighteen started spilling out. It was freezing outside and I knew their bodies had not had time to acclimate to the cold, so they were not the least bit interested in staying outside to look at my goats, horses, or even the zebra. They all ran into the house trying to get warm, and although my house is a good size, they filled up every room.

  The food was ready soon and we let the guests serve themselves. The adults went first, followed by the oldest children helping the youngest. Ten packages of Hebrew National hot dogs, ten one-pound boxes of spaghetti noodles, at least a gallon of marinara sauce, a dozen large pizzas, two huge pots of white rice, two gallons of vanilla ice cream, and two gallons of chocolate.

  When everyone had eaten their fill, the kids began to perform. Even more beautiful than the songs they sang at church. Music that seemed to come from their toes and bubbled up out of their hearts filled the farm house until it seemed to sway and pulse with their unified heartbeats. Even Zack, who preferred rock and roll to soul music, tried to keep up with their dancing and singing.

  After two hours of breaking bread and sharing stories and songs, the director said they had to hit the road as they had a four-hour road trip ahead. The kids gave us hugs and prayed for us, then filed out to the bus. As they rumbled up the long drive, light snow began to fall. I was ready to collapse into a heap when Zack declared, “I hope it snows really hard and the bus gets stuck and they have to spend the night here with us!” That was one time I was so grateful his prayers were NOT answered!

  Zack was like me in many ways, one being he had a heart for others, especially those who were hurting or in need. One of my favorite photos is of him kneeling on the floor, taping gift wrap around one of his favorite lightsabers. He’d decided that since the kids I serve in Ghana didn’t have any toys, he was going to give them his. Instead of selecting the things he didn’t like or had grown tired of, he picked out his favorite toys and wrapped them up for me to take on my next trip. I tried to reason with him that he might regret that decision in the future, and he admonished me for being selfish. He said, “If I give them things I don’t really like, then they probably won’t really like them either.” I didn’t know how to explain to him that kids who had escaped a civil war in Africa had never seen Star Wars and had no clue what a lightsaber was, or that Buzz Lightyear wasn’t a character they were familiar with. I just smiled at his generous heart and took them on my next trip.

  These are the memories I cherish most when I shut my eyes and try to hear his voice in my head. My young child giving away his favorite toys to kids in a refugee camp ten thousand miles away. Zack sneaking two loaves of my fresh-baked banana bread out of the house and up the hill to his best friend Michael’s house to share with his family. Zack inviting a crowd big enough to fill an auditorium to our house for lunch, knowing I would do whatever necessary to accommodate them. Zack bringing a teenage girl home from school, asking if she could stay because her addicted mother had lost their apartment and the girl was sleeping in a car…

  He brought at least ten or twelve friends home at different times, pulled me into my room and shared in confidence that they were hungry, homeless, had been beaten, or were addicted to something and he needed me to talk to them. He even asked me to go visit with the custodial grandparents of one girl, insisting that they needed help because the girl had health issues that were going untreated.

  It’s hard sometimes to remember the timber of his deep voice, so I call his cell number just to hear his recorded message. And then I cry. Usually until my face is swollen and my stomach is churning. I ugly cry. I haven’t made it through a single day yet that I haven’t had at least one breakdown, but I try to go crazy in the privacy of my own room away from my youngest children who are still at home. Late at night, when my show is over, when the house is quiet and the kids are all asleep is the hardest time of all. Zack was a night owl and he would wait for me to finish the show, then he would bounce down the stairs and meet me in the kitchen with a huge grin and a proposal, like “How would YOU like to make ME some nachos?” He’d deliver the lines like a game show host giving you an opportunity to win ten thousand dollars. His huge silly grin would always melt my heart, even though he drove my husband Paul crazy with the ease with which he manipulated me. Paul would snap, “He should have eaten dinner with the rest of us. You shouldn’t cook him extra food, let him eat leftovers.” But I dismissed his complaints and made Zack whatever his heart desired. He really wasn’t hard to ple
ase, his tastes were simple but specific. He wanted Dinty Moore beef stew, Nally’s chili, and homemade tacos or nachos. When he was younger he wanted tuna fish sandwiches on white bread with mayo. Nothing else. Plain, simple, no spice.

  After his funeral, a friend named Stephen came by the house and asked to talk with me. He was a big kid and seemed awkward in his own skin. He asked if he could share something with me, and began to shake as he choked out his words.

  He said: “A few years ago my folks went through a divorce, my dad left and Mom was trying to keep us together. She was broke, so I couldn’t afford lunch. I was sitting in the cafeteria all alone, and Zack saw me. I’m not cool like he was, but he came over to my table and asked ‘How’s it going? Why aren’t you eating?’ I shrugged my shoulders and told him that I didn’t have money for lunch. He smiled and disappeared. A few minutes later he came back with an entire plate full of food for me. When I told him I couldn’t pay him he said, ‘don’t worry, my mom won’t mind.’”

  Stephen went on to say that Zack didn’t just bring him lunch, he sat with him as he ate, and talked to him. He said that every day for weeks Zack bought him lunch and sat and ate with him. After a few days, Zack’s other friends stopped by and joined them and after a few weeks, he no longer felt like he was the odd kid without any friends. By this time, he was crying, and so was I. “Zack probably saved my life that year,” he said. “I was so depressed. I can’t believe he didn’t know how much everyone loved him.”

  The thing is, Zack did know everyone loved him. He knew he was loved by his family and friends, he knew that he was the apple of his father’s eye and that he had me wrapped around his little finger. His depression wasn’t for lack of love, he became depressed because of circumstances that were difficult and troubling. A storm that lead to a car accident that caused him to fear driving. A move to a different town to be with his father. A new school. A breakup with a girl. An illness that caused him to miss school and led to him not graduating on time. All these things added up to a bout with depression that stole his joy and his huge smile. His dad and I got him to a counselor who got him to a doctor, who advised him to go on antidepressants. I had no clue, nor did his father, how fatal a decision that would prove to be.

  Within a few weeks of beginning the medicine, Zack stopped being the boy I gave birth to—the child I had raised. Gone was the young man on the autistic spectrum who could not stand for a piece of garbage to remain in his garbage can overnight. Gone was the boy whose room was spotless and every single stuffed animal was in its assigned space. Gone was the kid who loved to sing and skateboard and hang out with friends. In his place was someone I did not know. This new Zack was angry all the time, snapping at me and his siblings. He had moved back home from his dad’s, his room became a pigsty, and he wouldn’t even put his clothes away. Zack was always, always, always the neatest, cleanest child in the family. That ended, and his garbage can started to fill with trash and spill over onto the hardwood floors. Piles of clean and dirty clothes mixed on his bed.

  When a child is over the age of eighteen, regardless of their emotional age, who drives them to the clinic, or who pays their bills, parents are not consulted about medical treatments. Calls I made about how Zack had started talking about déjà vu and time travel went unreturned. Later, I found out that in response, his medication had been INCREASED.

  I thought the medication would help him, and that antidepressants were just that, medicine to combat depression. I had no clue how deadly the poison that was given to my beautiful son was. No idea when I asked him “did you take your medicine today?” that I was contributing not to his mental wellbeing, but to his demise.

  Without telling me or his dad, he decided on his own that the side-effects of the drugs were too much for him to handle, and he quit taking his medication. The only people he told were young friends who did not know how deadly a decision that would be, and did not know to tell us. On Tuesday, September 26, he asked me to help him figure out how to apply to Bellevue College so he could take filmmaking classes in the fall of 2018. On Wednesday, September 27, he asked me to make an appointment with our dentist, so he could get braces again; his teeth had shifted, and he didn’t want them to continue to get crooked. On Thursday morning, the 28th, the day before I left for my annual trip to Africa, he came into my room before the sun was up. My hubby was in Oregon at the ranch he manages, and Zack tapped on the door as he often did, then came in and picked up Sophia, the schnauzer, put her on my bed and told me to scooch over. He laid down on top of the blankets next to me and pulled my arm up over his shoulder. I played with his beautiful long, curly hair as he pet the dog next to us. I fell back asleep stroking his hair, listening to him breathing, and woke to hear him singing in the shower.

  The next day I set my alarm for three a.m. to head to the airport for Africa. I tried to go into his room to say goodbye, but the door was locked. I tapped and told him to open it, he said he was sleeping. I said I was leaving for Ghana and would not see him for two weeks, and he sleepily replied “I’ll see you when you get home, love you, Mom” Had I known what he was going to do just four days later I would have broken the door off the hinges with my bare hands, pulled him from his warm bed and held him in my arms for days or weeks or months or however long it would take for his mind to clear and think reasonably once again. But I didn’t. I just turned and walked down the stairs and into the car and rode to the airport where I departed for Ghana.

  Zack left the farm on his sister Shaylah’s birthday, the 29th, and went back to his dad’s house. He went to counseling on Friday evening and was upbeat and cheerful during an almost two-hour session. He spent the weekend skateboarding, hanging out with friends, watching Star Wars, and enjoying his dad’s home-cooked Costa Rican foods. He played video games with his friends and stayed up late on Sunday night laughing. He caught a bus, then the ferry, to get back to the farm on Monday, frustrating his tutor because he missed classes Monday morning (she wrote to me in Ghana complaining that he was not in school). I sent him a text and called Paul, leaving him a message to talk to Zack to remind him he couldn’t miss school if he was going to catch up and graduate.

  He got a ride from the ferry dock to the house from a friend, who spent time with him in the barn playing with four kittens a friend had rescued and brought to us. He came in the house, talked to his siblings, and ate dinner with the family. After dinner, he went up to his bedroom and closed the door. A few hours later he headed downstairs with his coat on and his headphones in. Paul questioned him and he said he was going for a walk to clear his head, that he was stressed. Paul argued with him but let him go, figuring he was going to go smoke pot, something he and his friends had been doing the past year.

  A short time later Zack sent Paul a text message telling him he was sorry for being argumentative, and that Paul should not wait up for him, he would be gone a while. Paul figured he was up the hill at Michael’s house and went to bed. When he didn’t hear him come in, he sent him a text at 1:30, asking him if he had made it in. The next day his room was empty, and Paul assumed he had caught the 6:50 bus for school and went about his day. It wasn’t until I was contacted in Africa to say that Zack had missed another day of school that we began to panic, but it was already too late.

  He had left a note in his room, under his pillow. A two-page rambling letter talking about time travel, déjà vu, how he had to reset the “time continuum” and this was the only way to do it. He said he was sorry if he hurt us, but he thought he would wake up in his own bed the next day and have to do it all over again until “he got it right.” He wrote that time is like a river with bends and curves and he could step in and out at any point, and that he had been doing it for centuries. All delusional images created in his young brain by the SSRIs he had taken, and then discontinued.

  The medicine he was on should never be given to young people. Blind study drug tests have proven it causes delusions and suicidal or homicidal thoughts in almost half of the young people
who take it. And yet it is legal, and the only requirement is that the makers put a “black box warning” on the first prescription, stating it can be deadly, must be taken under supervision, and should not be discontinued. A black box warning that I never saw, his father never saw, and was never explained to either one of us. It was the local coroner who made a comment that made me wonder what he was talking about. He said, “This is the third teenage suicide I have dealt with in the last few weeks, all of them were on the same prescription drug.”

  The nightmare that was my life got even more hellish as I delved into thousands of pages of reports and studies that show how deadly SSRIs are, especially for people under the age of twenty-five. The initial report given to the FDA shows that the drugs are no more effective at combating depression than a placebo, and yet they can cause delusions and increase suicidal ideology in more than 45 percent of young people given the medicine. NO MORE EFFECTIVE THAN A PLACEBO? I spent the next three months in a stupor of blind rage waiting for the toxicology reports to come back, and when they did I was shaken once again. He had nothing in his system. No weed. No alcohol. No drugs that would cause him to be delusional like LSD or meth. Nothing.

  Mike Allen, his choir director wrote me this note shortly after Zack left us:

  I’ve struggled to put my thoughts into words. Zach was one of the most unique kids I’ve ever known. He was strangely confident yet needing reassurance all the time. He came to me as a creative and excited kid with some limited skills but a ton of energy and excitement. He wanted so badly to be a part of the groups and quickly became a class favorite! He was loved by everyone for sure. One of the best things about Zach is that he was an encourager and helper to anyone. At times it was almost annoying because even when he wasn’t one hundred percent on his OWN music, he was offering to help others. Man, that’s a heart of gold! He would literally move next to people that were struggling and encourage them.