The young man, crying quietly, in the back seat of the car is not recognizable as our son Seth. He is skinny, with a shaved head. His fingernails are dirty and cracked. He sweats profusely, even in cool weather. His clothes are stained, torn at the seams, missing buttons. He shuffles in his untied shoes. He doesn't use his hands to punctuate conversation, the way he used to. He holds them together in his lap to stop their shaking. He still carries around Crime and Punishment, his favorite book, but he tells us he has trouble concentrating. When he speaks, his words slur, his voice trails off before the ends of sentences.

      He looks like someone who is dying.

      When Seth was a child, I worried about accidents and intrusions ― a car swerving in the path of his bike, a stranger spiriting him away. But I was protecting him from what the world might do to him. When he became a teenager, I worried about what he might do to himself. But this did not include drug abuse. I couldn't connect drug use with a child who took drum lessons and walked the dog.

      The first time I heard what Seth told me about drugs, I interpreted his story as a temporary problem, a problem that could be fixed. Drug abuse did not fit into my sense of who I was as a mother and who he was as my child. My husband might be right ― Seth had a problem, a serious problem ― but I believed he was willing to change. I believed we could help him change.

      Seth went through the motions of getting help but never seemed to feel the problem was as serious as we thought it was. He continued to use drugs and to lie about it.

       He was bright enough to function quite well. He finished high school a semester early and was accepted into Harvard. College seemed to offer the hope of a fresh start, a place where he would have new friends and challenges. Maybe this would be what he needed, we told ourselves, to get back on track.

       When he was living away from home, we tried to believe his drug use was under control. College, though, brought its own pressures, as well as the opportunities afforded by less parental supervision. By Thanksgiving of his sophomore year, he told us he was entering an inpatient treatment program for drug abuse. I wish we had been more surprised.

      We brought Seth to the hospital and stayed with him while he filled out the intake forms. The night outside was clear and cold, a perfect fall night. We had answered the doctors' questions, and now we would go home and celebrate with our families, gathered for the holiday. Before we got to the car, we stopped on a hill above the parking lot. We held each other and cried.

      I am home alone when the doctor calls.

      "You should prepare to lose this child," he says.

      I am leaning against the wall, and when he says this I slide down the wall until I am sitting on the floor. I turn the words over in my mind.

      "Prepare." How do I do this, I wonder. Empty his closets? Plan his funeral?

      "Lose." Is this like letting go of his hand in a crowd? I imagine craning my neck to see over other people, searching for my son, who is still small, still needs me.

      "This child." As if we have spares, as if our other children can replace him.

      I grieve for the years overwhelmed by his addiction, years when I was lost to my family, my work, my self. I grieve for the loss of my optimism, the enthusiasm I used to feel that is now so hard to reclaim.

      I grieve for the relationship I used to have with Seth, the relationship I might have had with him now, one of openness and trust. I do not know how long it will take to rebuild that intimacy, or if that is still possible.

      I remember thinking when Seth was born that I would give my life to save his. Now I know that if he slips, there is nothing I can do.

　(713 words)