What Would Riley Do Bracelets

November 20, 2015November 20, 2015 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

As the requests increase for me to speak and tell Riley’s story to groups, the requests for WWRD (What Would Riley Do) bracelets increase as well. I have been giving the bracelets out to whoever wants one when I speak. My thinking is it is a reminder of Riley’s story and perhaps seeing the bracelet will make a person think twice about using a drug. It also may spurn a person to tell Riley’s story to someone.

This is creating a financial strain on me since I can be speaking to 250 students at a time. I have created a Go Fund Me account so that I can take donations. I will only be using the money to cover the cost of the bracelets.

What Would Riley Do if given the chance again to try a drug? He’d choose to not do it. He’d say, “It’s not worth it.”

If you feel led to help me spread Riley’s story with these bracelets, donations can be made at www.gofundme.com/WWRDbracelets

I Can’t

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015 / djuanadreed / 2 Comments

What if I don’t want to go there? I know it has been a long time since I have posted a blog. I have many blogs started. I can’t finish them. I close my computer and walk away.

I want him here. I want him to say something to make me smile. I want him to say something to make me mad. I want him to say something that makes me frustrated. I want him to say something that makes me think. I want him to say something.

He can’t.

I want him to ask, “What’s for dinner?” I want him to ask, “Can I have some money for coffee at Coffee Rush?” I want him to walk into the hall carrying a pair of pants asking me to wash them. I want him to say he’s going to bed and ask if I will rub his back. I want him to open the front door and say a friend is here and 5 others walk in behind him. I want to sit on the couch with him and talk about something, anything, please anything.

We can’t.

I want to see him walk in with new vinyl that he scored at Zia Records. I want to hear some new music playing upstairs and ask who is that. I want to hear him playing his guitar. I want to hear his laugh again. I want to smell his smell as he picks me up off my feet. I want to touch his soft skin.

I can’t.

Riley was awesome. He really was. He was the light in a room. He went through life smiling and causing others to smile. He gave away hugs and they hugged back. He is gone never to speak, smile, hug again. That happened in an instant.

A fatal decision made to try a drug for the first time took him from me. It only took one try to die. Stopped. Ended. Riley. I won’t ever hear his voice again. Touch him. Kiss him. Make dinner for him. Wash his clothes for him. Hand a $20 dollar bill to him for coffee again. See his shoes at the bottom of the stairs. Pick up a stack of coffee cups from his computer desk. I want to hear another, “I love you, Mom”.

We can’t share it. He can’t say it. I can’t hear it.

Whatever you think that drug might do for you, it’s not worth it. Listen to Riley’s story.

I Love You, Riley.

Broken Dishes

August 11, 2015 / djuanadreed / 6 Comments

I walked to the cabinet, picked up a wine glass, walked out the back door and slammed it as hard as I could to the ground. I screamed out loud. I crouched down, hugged my knees and rocked back and forth while I cried. I stood up, walked back to the cabinet, picked a plate and threw that one down. I kept at it for a while. Crying, marching back to the cabinet, tossing dishes onto the concrete and watching them shatter into pieces. The quiet of the night, the noise of the bugs in the dark interrupted with crashes of glass and ceramic as the broken pieces spread across my back porch.

Little shards hit my ankles as the dishes broke. If I had gotten cut I would have welcomed it. I much rather feel the pain on the outside. If it’s on the outside you bandage it and it heals. It is hard to find relief when the pain is on the inside. I was looking for a bandage by breaking something. I needed to let it out.

I am angry. I am sad. I am hurt. I am lonely. I have no control. I have no freaking control! Anger is like a poison. I don’t like how it stews and burns on the inside of me. It’s prickly with sharp edges. It eats up the good. It taints my days. I need a punching bag to punch. I don’t have one though I’m thinking it might need to be on my next shopping list next to dishes.

I chose breaking dishes on the hard concrete to let the anger out. Oh I picked which dishes and I counted to make sure I had at least 4 of each before I walked back outside. (I’m practical even in my anger.) It helped. I feel a little better. It helps to see it all broken and scattered on the concrete this morning. The pain is visible in a way and I am in no hurry to clean it up.

My grief stretches wider than the death of my son though that makes me very angry at times. It is a broken marriage of half of my lifetime. A broken family. I lay under a bus that I threw myself under to shield and protect. There is loss of family and friends. The home that I ran and took care of, where my kids grew up in is on the market to be sold. Riley’s organ is at the dump buried under someone else’s garbage. A 400 lb albatross that didn’t work yet it was one of Riley’s prized possessions. If only I had been asked first. If only I had a chance to find it a home before it got pushed off the back of a truck. I have no control.

Those broken dishes that lay on the ground represent my grief in more than one area of my life. Eventually I will pick up the pieces, sweep it up and bag it. I want to throw away the anger with the broken dishes. I want peace. I need peace of some sort as I sift through my life. If only I could live in a cocoon.

Like a butterfly emerges from a cocoon, I have to believe despite what life brings, that I can fly above it all. I want to look forward not backwards. Can the grief of losing a child have its place in our lives without it taking over and ruining us? I believe so.

With grief comes anger, hurt, pain. I will carry Riley with me in my heart forever. I will mourn for him and miss him until the day that I die. I will get over these other circumstances that have created anger. I have accepted that Riley is gone. I can’t bring him back. I will continue to tell Riley’s story in hope that his story saves a life.

Harboring anger has eaten me up inside. I cannot walk barefoot in my freshly cut grass that I proudly mowed myself because it is now laden with broken glass. My advice is: Don’t hold it in. Let it out. The longer you hold the bitter emotions in, the bigger it will fester. Cry if you need to cry. Scream and yell at the wall if you need to. Kick something. Stomp like a 2 yr old having a temper tantrum. Do what you need to do to release it. Save the dishes if you can.

Circumstances that make me hurt and angry will come and go. The control that I do have is to take care of myself by constructively releasing the anger before all I have are paper plates.

I Love You, Riley.

My Riley Quilt

July 21, 2015 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

My Riley quilt has arrived. If you have followed me on Facebook over the past year, you know that Greg’s older sister, Sharon, offered to make he and I quilts out of Riley’s t-shirts. We divided the shirts picking which ones were important to us. Greg and Riley went to concerts together. They both loved music. I was a booster Mom for band and choir. I went along to some concerts and I also shared his love of music. We chose our memories with him in the shirts we picked.

I had a hard time parting with the shirts that weren’t washed. They still smelled like him. I held them close. I stared at them trying to make myself, will myself to wash and send them. It was too hard. I wasn’t ready. I decided to not make myself do it. I waited.

And when it felt right, when I decided I wanted the quilt enough to let them go, I washed them, folded them and sent the box of our chosen shirts to Sharon. Right now, to be honest, I am missing the shirts again. I can see the remnants of the paisley shirts that I bought him and the Hawaiian shirts I picked out for him that he was so well-known for wearing. The one he wore that last evening that he was alive I miss the most. He had dropped it in the same spot in his room that most of his dirty clothes gathered. He had a hamper. He rarely used it! I held that shirt the most.

When UPS rang my doorbell today, I stepped out and saw the box and knew what it was. Sharon let me know that it was coming. I hurried inside, put it down, ran to my junk drawer to find a pocket knife and started to cry before I even got back over to the box. More quiet tears fell as I opened it and more came as I spread it out and admired it. When I wrap myself in the quilt, I will cry again.

Sharon said that it took her so long to make the quilts because it took her awhile to be able to open the box of shirts when they came to her. It was an emotional task of love what she has done for us. I have imagined being wrapped up in this quilt for a year now. I am forever grateful to Aunt Sharon. Bria and Braden have their quilts from her when they graduated from high school. She has done a quilt for all of her nieces and nephews at age 18. Riley’s was planned, but he died before she had the shirts to make his.

On my quilt are t-shirts from The Beatles, Rush, Weezer, The Ramones, The Doors, Foo Fighters, Dinosaur Jr., Jimi Hendrix, Reel Big Fish and Two Verse. There are specific memories for each band t-shirt I picked. Music was Riley and there are experiences he had with each shirt on or experiences he shared with me while in them that are my memories. I also chose one of his CHS Marching Band t-shirts. I was remembering lining up feeding the band during long practices and before football games. I chose a CHS Choir t-shirt because I have beautiful memories of watching him on stage with his long blonde hair in his sparkly red bow tie singing his heart out. I have a tender memory of watching him play his guitar and sing with a classmate during choir class. His choir teacher told me that she watched me watching him from the back corner of the room. She said she will forever remember my face in that moment. I also picked his Senior t-shirt because of the box of graduation announcements I had sitting on my desk that never got mailed. For the cap and gown that I bugged him to make sure that he got ordered. He never picked those up to wear on graduation day.

In the center of my quilt is the last gift Riley gave me. On my birthday in April, he gave me a Northern Arizona University MOM t-shirt that I hadn’t worn yet. I would have worn it proudly. He never got to step on campus as a freshman.

The times I scooped these shirts up off that pile in his room and washed them are on my mind. The times he sat himself next to me in them and said, “Mom, will you scratch my back?” The times I ironed the paisley shirts before he left the house on a date or for senior pictures. Senior pictures that he never got to see. Sometimes I sleep in his white under shirts. I kept those.

My love, my son, at 18 died from trying a drug the very first time. A drug that was bought online. A tab that was loaded way past the amount he thought he bought. Chasing a cool experience, Riley had a horrifying one that he wasn’t able to climb out of. I lost my son that night.

I hold this quilt of memories of Riley trying to remember how he smelled. How he felt when he hugged me in them. What he looked like in the t-shirts smiling at me and hearing his voice saying, “I love you, Mom”. I want so bad to look at his face alive and healthy with that twinkle in his blue eyes. I want to be able to smile back at him and say, “I love you, Riley”. I will have to hold him in my Riley quilt instead.

I Love You, Riley.

Meet Bert

July 14, 2015 / djuanadreed / 2 Comments

Meet Bert. Bert is my side kick, my constant companion, my rock, and my security. Bert is a 6 1/2 year old pure bred Bouvier des Flanders. At 8 weeks old, Bert flew to us on a plane from Pennsylvania. He was a black and brown bundle of fur that blended into our dark floor. Today he stands tall and 120 lbs (or more). Buying him was a covert operation. He was a surprise Christmas gift from the kids and I to their Dad. He was a wonderful addition to our family. He fit right in. He is big and bulky like a bull in a china closet, soft to the touch as a furry blanket with a constant slobbery wet muzzle from lapping up water when he drinks.

When I bought the log cabin in Kentucky, Greg offered for Bert to move with me as he knew Bert would enjoy the larger space to roam with cooler weather. It is fun to watch Bert in Kentucky. He drug his nose, romped and laid in the snow during our first winter as if he didn’t even know it was cold. He moves around the yard smelling new smells. He posts himself at the bottom of trees looking straight up waiting for the squirrels to come back down. He chases fireflies in the grass in the evenings like he chased the laser light the boys would shine for him to chase.

Social is not a word I would use about Bert. Since he was young when he and I were on walks around the local park, he would stop and allow people to touch him out of a sort of obligation while looking at me like now can we keep moving? His job is to protect and care for others. His breed is a herding breed. When he was a pup, he would try to block me from climbing the stairs. He was always under my feet like a toddler. He still is.

Bert is my side kick and constant companion. Though he is not allowed to lay on my couch, he often slips in the maneuver of backing up to it, leaving his front feet on the floor and plopping his behind down beside me. He rides along in the car with me when I go into town. When he sits straight up and looks out the window, his head is close to the roof of the car. Passers by take a second look to see what that large hairy thing is in the car window. He naturally draws a lot of attention and often is gifted treats from people at our local stops.

Bert does not leave my side. I have to sit outside with him. If I go inside, he will stop whatever he is doing and hurry to the back door. I wish he would stay outside and play. He will not. He is like a ping pong ball in a maze. As I fold clothes and put them away room to room, he follows at my heels crowding me in the hall. I try to tell him to relax that I will be right back, but he doesn’t seem to get it. If I stand still, he lays down and then as soon as I make a sudden move, he pops back up to follow. I can’t even go to the bathroom alone when he is awake- see? just like a toddler.

Bert lets people know that he is here if they come close to the cabin. He has a very loud bark that stops the largest of men in their tracks while they prepare to run. He sent the little old lady with her small dog in her arms running after hearing Bert’s bark of hello from the front porch. I tried to calm her. I yelled, “He’s really not mean. He’s just loud.” She kept going. I am safe with Bert around.

Bert is my rock. When the pain of missing Riley comes to a head, when the tears sneak out, Bert stares at me for a minute then moves out of sight to another room as if to say, I’ll let you feel this for a bit. When I am worn out, when the crying has stopped, he comes back and lays at my feet to let me know he is here.

I know he misses all of what he knew and was familiar with in Arizona from the other pets to family. They miss him too. I am thankful that Bert is here. I am never alone. He is in tuned to me. He senses me. I know he misses Riley too. There are many pictures of Bert and Riley together over the years.

I have the memory – one I had seen many times- of Bert and Riley wrestling when Riley got home from school. That was on the last day that I saw Riley alive. Bert is changed forever since the night Riley died. Me too. I know he would run up to Riley and give him his back to scratch with a big lick across his cheek afterwards if he could. Me too.

I Love You, Riley.

A Roller Coaster Ride

June 8, 2015June 9, 2015 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

Joy! Roller Coaster Ride, Choir Trip 2014

The pattern of Grief is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is coming day-to-day. There are good weeks and there are terribly bad weeks. I have recently made it through some of those terribly bad weeks that came with the one year anniversary of Riley’s death in May. I have moved into a feeling of numb but I am functioning. I am trying to recoop. I am trying to live. Once you go through one of the stages of grief, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever feel it again. This I have learned. You might visit stages out of order, skip one, come back to another and repeat. My grief is not going anywhere. This I know.

This past weekend I attended The Great American Brass Band Festival in Danville, Kentucky. I took my chair and I planted myself on the grass with my camera in hand. What I saw around me were people of all ages eating ice cream, drinking drinks listening to music while sitting on the lawn. The stage was a gazebo. The backdrop was an old brick building, green grass, trees, pretty flowers with the sun going down and the fireflies blinking. As the bands played, children waved around light sticks. The patrons Moms, Dads, children danced close to the stage to the brass music from the bayou. The weather was perfect. The music was wonderful. Laughter echoed around me. I was thoroughly enjoying myself.

Staring at the band, I focused on the tuba player. Oh, so innocently, I thought… Riley would like this event. And there the sharp edge of grief snuck in. It crept straight to my eyes and they puddled. It leaked into my heart and it ached. It was a quick thought that turned into a slump of my shoulders, a limpness of my extremities and a squeeze of my heart. The joy of the moment was instantly replaced.

You see, Riley was a band kid. He had moved from the saxophone to the tuba his sophomore year of high school. He played the tuba well just like every other instrument he took interest in. On Friday nights, we sat in the stands at the football games to hear him play. Over the years we sat in the seats of the Chandler Center for the Arts for his orchestra concerts. I volunteered in the band’s booster club. Band was a part of Riley.

This being a brass band event, I noticed a lot of saxophones and sousaphones (tubas) in the parade the next day. That didn’t make me cry. I wasn’t crying all weekend. It’s just those moments that all of a sudden grab you and yank you down. Like on a trip to the grocery store I was in the frozen food aisle, I saw a frozen pizza made with white sauce and a memory of having dinner with Riley at a restaurant came to mind. He ordered pizza with white sauce. The instant memory of conversation and laughter during dinner that night hit me straight on. That evening we spent together eating pizza was not long before he died. It was a good night.

So in the middle of the store, in a split second my mind went from what do I need at the grocery store to Riley. The tears welled up in my eyes, they sneaked down my cheeks while I stared blindly at a cold glass door thinking about my dead son that I will never share pizza with again. People walked around me as I continuously wiped each tear until the tears ceased and then I resumed my hunt for the next item on the list.

The realization that this is my life is in my face. I will forever have thoughts of my son and subsequent tears. Riley was lost by a first time try of LSD bought online. My youngest boy who had a whole life ahead of him of college and a future is gone by a decision to mess with a drug. This is my life now because of his decision and the consequences of it.

I am me, but I am not me anymore. It’s like rediscovering life with a hole in my heart. It is trudging through the poop, the waste, the knee-high water that rises in front of me. Like a tide it disappears and reappears. This is grief. It is my life in the absence of my son who was a part of me.

I miss that part of me so very much. I am here living this altered life I didn’t ask for. What I ask is that my grief not be in vain. That the loss this world has suffered by Riley not being in it anymore be a story to be told to young adults who are and will be faced with the decision to try a drug. It is what keeps me telling Riley’s story. It is what has nailed me to the seat of the ups and downs on this roller coaster ride. It is my hope that lives are saved by my speaking out.

I Love You, Riley.