Grant’s Goodbye

I originally wrote this story almost ten years ago but decided to re-incarnate as I had the great pleasure of recently hearing from Grant, now a young man. He is enjoying life, content and accomplished in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by his beloved forests. His name has been changed in my story for privacy sake.

He left us yesterday.  My twelve-year-old son’s best friend.  It was not unexpected, yet we were still not quite ready to say goodbye. And as we stood on his driveway that balmy September afternoon, an unspoken heaviness hung in the air amid feigned smiles and half-hearted well wishes.

He was to attend a therapeutic boarding school in the rocky mountains of Colorado, for the next two years.  A school that specialized in the emotional as well as the intellectual needs of boys who were struggling.  He had battled anxiety and ADHD for as long as we knew him but lately a more sinister villain called depression had joined the trio.  Public school was not working for him and his daily trips to the counselor left him dejected and angry.  He hated school, he told us again and again.

He took refuge in nature. Whenever upset, he would flee to the solace of the woods, headlamp in place along with a survival kit he had purchased on the internet. Grant loved the forest which seemed to hold for him, its own therapeutic powers.  As a going away gift we gave him a lithograph night-light.  Made of delicate porcelain it displayed a beautiful etched portrayal of the forest. And when lit, its golden hue cast an almost other-worldly hue of the woodlands, his most cherished place to be. 

He is a beautiful boy with deep red hair, fine features and fair skin.  His face reflects an impishness that is infectious. He is highly intelligent and intuitive.  My son and he became fast friends three years ago and enjoyed a special bond as best friends do. We both knew this path was the best thing for Grant but it did not make his leaving any easier as over the years he had become a fixture in both our home  and hearts.

All contact at his new school was to be via letter, no social media of any sort, so I made it a point that we would write to him, at least once a month to help with the homesickness.   I have a book of postcards, each one a different flower fairy illustrated by the brilliant Cicely Mary Barker, an 19th century English artist known for her life-like depictions of fairies in nature.  I chose for Grant a red-headed mischievous faced boy fairy and penned in the margin “this reminded us of you!” I then enclosed a second self-addressed card already stamped for him to fill out and return to us.

The next card we sent to him contained a dried wishbone from our previous night’s roast chicken. Growing up, my father would always save the wishbone for me and my sisters. I thought it was just the type of ritual Grant would enjoy.  “Find someone you like at your new school and break the wishbone!” I scrawled.  “We miss you.”  But then, a week later thinking again about the wishbone, I was filled with dread.  What if gets the long end and his wish is to come home? What had I done? In trying to comfort him I could possibly have made him feel worse.

One afternoon several weeks later, I paused at my son’s bedroom door after hearing him speaking to someone who sounded as if he were crying. The voice was distinctively Grant’s.  Distraught, his words tumbled out in a hurried jumble of emotion. “I want to come home.  I hate it here. I miss everyone so much!” After a few moments, my son replied to his friend in a calm yet firm voice “You have to push through…” 

I had never before heard my son use the expression.  When I asked him what he meant by “push through,” he explained that their middle school track coach would always tell the boys to push through their pain no matter how hard, and they might just find they were stronger than they ever knew. Grant struggled while on the track team due to his asthma but always heeded the coach’s words.  And indeed, regardless of his struggles, never failed to make it to the finish line. 

I sometimes worried about how my son felt losing his best friend “Do you miss Grant?”  His response was always the same. “It’s fine mom.”  And then I realized, perhaps the strain of seeing his friend in so much pain was harder than letting him go.

The last thing we sent him was a care package right before Halloween. It contained fake fangs, a calendar book with different photos of forest scenes, two packages of his favorite gummy bears and a small stuffed owl that had strangely beckoned to me from high on a store shelf. I imagined the little owl sitting on his night table. I also included a pre-stamped fairy card he could send back to us with ease.  When I called his mother to review what I was sending, she paused when I had mentioned the stuffed owl.  “He asked me if he could have a real one last week for a pet!”

Several weeks later, we received the fairy card by return mail.  Grant’s familiar hurried scrawl contained the following sentiments: “I loved the red-headed fairy card, it does sort of look like me!” “ I’m learning to play the banjo!” Thank you for the owl, I keep him in my backpack.”  But it was the last line that remains with me.  “I still don’t like it here,” he confided, “but I am going to push through…” 

And those simple words were all I needed.