Searching for Stephen - a Sad Saga Continues

The week before Christmas, he was comitted to a health care facility because he had attempted suicide. On Christmas Day, he was back home, sitting across the dinner table from us. Stephen was laughing, he looked you in the eye when he spoke to you, he made jokes, he was actually THERE physically and mentally, unlike prior years when he stayed in the family basement during holiday dinners and celebrations. Last night, as I was leaving my house to cover an event for a local newspaper, my worst fears came true. EMT's, police cars, hook and ladder trucks, small fire trucks all were parked in front of my neighbor's house, ranging from her home to ours. Firefighters and police officers with grim expressions on their faces confirmed my fears: Stephen was gone again, he had left home and they suspected that he had swallowed rat poison before he left. They continued to search, stumbling their way through bushes, streams and embankments in the dark of night. As of right now, Stephen is still missing.

I have known the 22 year old Stephen for the past thirteen years; at least, I thought we knew him. We are neighbors, we are close friends who shared most holidays together as families. He is the fourth son in a family of five sons and one daughter; he was the true 'middle' child in all senses of the word. While his siblings had blonde or light brown hair, Stephen was physically the most striking of all the children, with his jet black hair and beautiful blue eyes. He was also the most quiet of the children. In a family of six, I guess, it's often hard for the parents to stay on top of everything with every child. The father was a prominent attorney and partner in a high-powered, big city law firm, felled eighteen months ago by a series of strokes. The strokes left him unable to work, unable to drive, unable to be a father figure in the true sense of the word.

Whereas he had once attended all of his children's sporting events, now he relied on the courtesy of others to drive him there. Conversations were so radically changed; this once somewhat pompous, outspoken and articulate man was now reduced to a slight, frail figure who relied on others to make sure he was properly dressed, a man whose conversations often contained the same words over and over again, whose conversations often ended abruptly when he got up, for no particular reason, and just left the room. Stephen was his father's 'caretaker' now. After a rocky high school road, after his older brother was enlisted in a military academy to set him on the right track, after frequent brushes with the law over the use of marijuana, Stephen went out of state to a very decent university where he not only graduated but graduated with honors as well.

He truly was the 'dark horse' of the family. While one brother was a prominent Southern attorney, another off to a promising career in real estate, another who was attending college on a lacrosse scholarship, Stephen somehow fell right smack in the middle. In high school, he had been a very talented soccer player who was thrown off the team for cursing at his coach. He was away, God knows where, more often than he was home. The veiled rumors of drug use continued to haunt him; he was hospitalized in a southern mental health institute after a particularly bad episode of drug use while in college. He turned to reading dark materials, Gothic novels, works by Edgar Allen Poe...on a beautiful sunny summer afternoon, while the rest of the family sat poolside, Stephen was in the basement bedroom, reading, reading, reading...

What had happened to Stephen in such a short period of time to turn our charming dinner mate into a member of the 'slacker' generation who wanted to kill himself? What pushed him over the edge? What could have possibly been so wrong in his life that nothing or no one could right it for him? And why didn't his parents know?...

As they continue searching physically for Steven, I am at a loss for words. Was he overcome by the responsibility of having to take care of a father who was emotionally and physically a shell of his former self? Or was it a lifelong lingering sense of self-doubt, one that no one in the family really ever took the time or the energy or the love to address? A troubled teen turns into a troubled young man because no one steps up to the plate for him. I know that his father could not be there now for him; if anything, he may have pushed Stephen over the edge because of his own constant needs and demands, his own inability to function in this world. As for his mother...Mother has moved on to a different place in her own life as well. Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of a large family, she has purchased a home for herself and their daughter in another state, where she can be close to her eldest son and rely upon him and his family for help. She has the power of attorney for the family; she has sold and purchased homes, not always in everyone's best interests perhaps, on her own now. She speaks bitterly about the quality of her own life now - no husband, no father figure, having to be both mother and father to all of these children herself, no companionship, the list goes on. Was she - or could she have been - there for Stephen in his darkest hours, down there in that basement bedroom?

We wait to hear of Stephen's whereabouts. We wait to make an agonizing decision on whether, and how far, we should get involved with his recovery - assuming that can be had now. Will he show up, haggard, wild-eyed, and desperate, on our doorstep, as he (and his siblings) have done in the past? This time, I truly, deeply hope so, no matter the hour or the circumstances. We keep him deeply in our hearts and our thoughts as we all continue to search for Stephen....

Postscript: Stephen returned home sometime after midnight on the evening that he left, rat poison pellets still in his pocket. Shortly thereafter, his younger brother drove him to the county medical mental health facility, to which he was committed and remains at this time. His father incapacitated by his strokes, remains at home; his mother is presently still out of town but is expected to return home by week's end...