Transcript for A Son’s Struggle, A Father’s Grief

Well, now I don't know and understand the pain he's going through back then, because at the time, frankly, I had no idea. We didn't realize how serious things were getting at that point. Everything that he communicated to us was everything's okay. I've got an control. I'm doing what I need to do to get things done. Tell me about Charlie. Charlie, it was just a great kid. You couldn't ask for a better child. He was very bright. He was getting all his in school. He was doing well in the Boy Scouts. He didn't talk back to us. He didn't yell as parents or cuss at us. And which probably made him more difficult for us to understand how challenged he was. Going into elementary school, he was having trouble just trying to stay focused, getting homework done, projects, et cetera. He did test positive for ADHD. In the past, I've been somewhat skeptical of that diagnosis of ADHD, but having Charlie, I'm not a skeptic anymore. We found a good medication from that helped tremendously until we got to middle school. And that's where things went a bit sideways. There's something called twice exceptional, twice exceptional. Yes, or two E. And that's where a child is highly intelligent, but they also have a learning disability. And because those two together can be a very difficult combination. They're brain tends to function in a different way. They can be very challenged with them. And they have difficulty socializing. So it was happening for Charlie is that he could learn the material very quickly. But because of his ADHD, he couldn't actually complete assignments and get things done. And what he started entering was a pattern of procrastination and avoidance. He'd be so frustrated that he'd say, well, I'm just going to put my homework off until the last minute. And then at the, literally, the 11th hour, sometimes later night, he would just, this amazing amount of work get all A's. We recognize that he was becoming more withdrawn, and we found a therapist for him in middle school who was frankly, not particularly helpful, but at least we're doing all the things we can because it's also difficult to find effective therapies for kids. I mean, right now we're having a mental health, really crisis in our country, and there's just not a lot of resources out there. Charlie was so frustrated. He was developing, and I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm but I'm We didn't reach that point until he started high school, and he started taking AP classes, he's taking advanced physics, and you simply can't wait until the 11th hour to get the work done. And he was doing a lot of video games, excessive video games, and we were aware of how much time he was spending online, cruising the right web, and how much he was actually getting his work done. We could see that he just was definitely struggling. He knew what he needed to do, but he'd always fail and he couldn't get it done.

So here's where our world's fellow part. Basically. He got to the point where he percussed so much that you couldn't catch up. And what happened was Charlie said, I can't face my teachers. I can't go to school. And then as we were trying to convince him, it just got worse because we're fighting heads because like Charlie got to go and he's shut down. He just fell apart. He would isolate in his bedroom. He would not interact with the family. He stopped showering. He would just spend time on the internet playing games. And he really wanted to talk with my mom and dad and we're not sure what to do. So we got him to see a child psychiatrist. We actually found one that was highly regarded. And the day we went to go see her, Charlie's in the car and says, I'm not going to go in. I won't go see her. And she's like, no, if he can't come here, I can't see him. And this is a person that was supposed to be really good. And we received nothing other than a bill. And as parents for like times running out, we're watching our son just disintegrate at home. And we're desperate to find resources to help us. He was very protective about his laptop. And one time I looked on his laptop and discovered that he had gone to a suicide chat line to try to seek some help because he said, I'm some suicidal thoughts. And of course, that was a big wake-up call for us clearly. And we are just beside ourselves.

Absolutely, but the frustration is that you don't know what to do to help them. You're trying to do all the right things and you're afraid of making mistakes.

We did, because at this point we just felt we couldn't keep him at home and be safe. And we also thought, well, he's spending so much time online and by himself and isolating, how do you break this? And effectively with willingness therapy is, and it's a very frightening thing for a parent to choose. Your child is basically sent to this facility. This is in Utah and given a backpack and some very basic essentials for being in the outdoors and they spend the entire three months with no technology, hiking, backpacking and doing therapy, group therapy, individual therapy, journaling, and different readings to help them. And it's harsh. I know some people have been critical these programs. But I can say this with complete conviction that willness therapy is what saved our son's life. I think we've lost him to suicide at some point, if that had not taken place. He was journaling while at willness and, in fact, access to his phone is laptop. And I've found a tead gone to all sorts of inappropriate websites, not just pornography, but also websites that actually had violent images that no 14 year old would should look at or ever see because they don't have a process it and you can't unsee this. So he had dealt a friendship or relationship with this personal Instagram who initially was portraying themselves as a woman. And tried to discover that he was a guy. And this person claimed to have stabbed someone to death. And Charlie maintained this relationship and sort of embrace this person, which is just emphasizes for us how he was so desperate for social connection. And he's just living this world by himself. He really lost concepts of reality and lost touch of what we consider to be anything else that we healthy.

He was writing things that were extremely dark. One of the things that I discovered was a journal he'd been writing in. And one of the things he wrote was, I think of all the ways I can injure or kill myself, mainly kill myself, using objects or environments around me. Sometimes, not often though, I think of objects that I can't and see in the room, like a game. And he can, as a parent, to read something he's journaling, can you imagine reading this and discovering that you're this is what your child's writing and he's 14 and he's writing this and he's 14 he writes other things that they're all just just very dark and very frightening things of a child who's clearly struggling profoundly having these thoughts of suicide potential harm to mom and dad or harming others but it was terrifying and you just realize that

Yes, he'd said that. That's terrifying for you to read. It was beyond terrifying, but he'd read right some of those things and they are dramatically profoundly difficult to read as a parent and even to share. And it's so painful because you know this is not your son. This is You know, his illness and we're just thinking like, how can he write this? How could he be so mad at himself and mad at the world that he feels the need to write such lines of hatred and potential violence? And over the course of three months, he actually started to significantly improve. I remember one time we were getting the opportunity to go visit him while there. He ran over and grabbed mom and lifted off the ground and it was just It's just so wonderful to see him experience joy. And to be happy to see us. It was a very rare moment.

For two years at sat there, Charlie made no mention of it. We had no idea. It's assisted on mom's phone. And you played it. Oh, yes. It was so profound. We actually called the revelation. That recording was the key for us to understand what we've been missing for the last two years of how much our son was truly suffering. But we'd found it that we maybe could have done some interventions in a much earlier time that we didn't know were unnecessary.

Yeah. Sorry.

And, I mean, you go through life and you have to sort of, to cut a what I should as a bit. If you just slid that phone next to mom, say, hey, listen to this, anything, just something that would have just let us know that existed into here that recording. If that age at that time, I can't even tell you how much it hurts us as parents, because like I said, it's the revelation. It just suddenly, like someone turn on the lights, because all the struggles he had with procrastination and frustrations and the social isolation, we just had no idea how deep it went.

Of course, he's going to procrastinate on work and not be able to focus, and it's just... Yeah, and of course, as us, we're thinking, okay, all the times like, Charlie, you've got to do this, you've got to get your homework done, you've got to, and you're thinking yourself, oh my God. I had no idea what he was struggling with. And I'm just... Oh. And you love your child. You love your child so intensely. You don't know what to do. And you feel very alone. Because it's very few people you can discuss it with. It weighs very heavy on the entire family. And with these mental health issues, it's not just the patient. It's the entire family is a patient. Everyone suffers profoundly and deeply. And it's a very difficult isolating journey.

I guess the first thing that saved Charlie's life was wilderness therapy. And the second thing that actually brought him to being healthy was to grow school. He was there from 10th grade through graduating from high school. And in this process, slowly and incrementally, he got better. and they've got advisors that are watching over them. They have different levels of how controlled they are, how tight the container may be where the child is. And they have very intimate classroom settings. There might be four students or five students with a teacher. And for some like Charlie who tends to procrastinate, you can't hide.

No, I'd say after the first year, we actually became much more confident in his path. He was doing exceptionally well to studies, and he basically was becoming healthy.

And on the ACT, which is the top score is 36. He got a 35. Unfortunately, he was rejected for a lot of schools, which was for him very disheartening. But he took responsibility for it. He says, Dad, this is on me. I'm going to make the best of this. And he came down between engineering and NYU, or UC Davis to study aerospace engineering. And we talked about the pros and cons, and we chose UC Davis.

Yeah, mom's a big cheerleader. Oh. What a great moment.

Yes, after that week, he came home. And I just was so happy for him and everything was good. Everything was good. After years of just such a horrible pain and suffering and isolation, we're like, wow, okay. We're going to turn a new chapter and let's, let's break it on. And things we're going to turn out that way. Because on Thursday night, this is now August 25th, 2022. I went back up and say, good night to him. I knocked on his door and the way his bedrooms configured when I look in his desk is around the corner. I can't see him. And I opened the door and I can hear him when his computer with headphones and a microphone talking to his friends. And he's just joking around saying, oh, people, they say Nevada, but you're supposed to pronounce it Nevada. And he's just having a casual conversation with someone. So I sit to myself, I'll let him talk. We'll talk tomorrow. And I close the door. And I didn't know that'd be the last time that I've heard my son speak again. The next day, he had left a note outside the door saying I was up late playing and let me sleep in. So we just go through our morning routine. His sister goes to high school, and I go to work. I'm at a medical school and the phone rings. And it's my wife. She was just screaming his name Charlie and trying to explain how she found him. The sound of her voice was just pure pain and anguish. It's like her soul is being ripped and ripped and too. And immediately before she could even say anything else, I knew. I knew. And I rammed the door and I told my colleague, I think my son is dead. ran to the car and I'm just trying to get home as fast as a can and we had a three-way call with the 911 dispatcher he's not responding and as it turns out when I was driving our community I was driving in with the fire truck on the ambulance we're getting to the house at the same time And of course, there's nothing they could do. Charlie been going for several hours about that time. He's just lying there. And your mind is just racing like what happened. How can this be? Because the past several years, you'd open the bedroom door or you're afraid of what you'd find, but not now. Not now. I mean, Charlie made it. We all made it. After all this, justifies belief.

Well, I mean, for my wife, Jill and I, we felt confident, very confident. This was not suicide. And it took about eight weeks to go back. And the corner called me personally and said, Randy, you son died from alcohol toxicity from just to which alcohol in the system. And also he said that he had a cardiac condition that was undignosed. It's a type of arrhythmia, which he said may have played a part in his passing as well. And he was an accident. In the bathroom next to his bedroom, there was these two cans of like cocktails in a can. There's two of those, their empty on the counter. Our speculation is that he decided to drink and drink a lot in a very short period of time on an empty stomach that would run his blood alcohol to the point where he couldn't survive.

That's all we found. And although there's maybe like two cocktails per that before drinks, perhaps he'd gone downstairs and drank something else. I mean, we had liquor cabinet in a pantry and he may have had more there and then went upstairs. I don't know.

Well, that was one of the profound frustrations we had because we just lost those years of having our son with us and getting to know him. And we really don't know who he is. And we're just desperate to learn about our son. And we're doing everything we can to find these scraps of information to try to build more about who he was. And this past year, I'd avoided looking at Discord because that's very primarily communicated with a lot of his friends. Because it wasn't sure what I'd find.

Yes. And finally, as a one-year anniversary came up, it came on us. Then I said, well, I've got to do this. And I went and looking at the posts that he made. And I found nothing that was disconcerting those last moments. In fact, the 90 past was just, his last posting was around 1230 in the morning on the 26th. And it was just the usual teenage banter going back and forth. I did come across one thing he posted four days before, and this is actually very moving. So it was a conversation with one of his friends online, but Charlie was trying to offer words of comfort and support. And this is what he typed. Always watch the sunrise as if you were a child, as a child watches it as if it was first, a talist quote, If you know everything, you don't have wonderment or curiosity. Sometimes it's just nice knowing that existence itself is beautiful. Sorry for the monologue. It's a subject I feel quite passionate about. Life, I mean.

Four days before you died. I'm so proud of my son. Charlie's taught me more about grit and inner strength of character that I learned in 20 years in the Navy. He's taught me more about compassion and the value of life that I've learned in a lifetime of practicing medicine. And for the families out there that are struggling with the kids that are having mental health challenges, I understand their isolation and their fear and their grief and their sorrow and what they're going through. And it's a very lonely isolating journey that I want them to know that others out there have been through this and it's important and want to get them strength. That's what I encourage them to never give up.

Well, you have to rebuild your life. You spend your life putting together this very complex puzzle that has all the pieces of your life. And this event comes along and basically the table gets kicked over. And the pieces of the flying and you realize those pieces will never fit back together again the way they were. One of my colleagues had lost his child about 16 years ago in an accident. and he uses his expression, you're no longer, get to live in the ordinary world where everyone else is living. Because once you've experienced such a profound sense of loss and grief, things that used to body before no longer matter. And you have to find new purpose in your life and new ways to experience joy. In the week trial is home before he passed, he talked for a long time about data. All of this Star Wars program called the Mandalorian. Please, let me show you the Mandalorian. And eventually I said okay fine. And as we watched this, he was telling about the characters in the backstory and how he really enjoyed this. And I thought it was okay. And after that, if you ask me, in my own, when I go watch an hour of the next season of the Mandalorian, maybe be not. But when I watch the Mandalorian with my son on the couch next to me, watching TV, talking to me about the characters and how much you loved it.

Just enjoy the small moments with the people you love. You think you have control in your life and you don't. You don't know what's going to happen in any given moment. And finding joy in those everyday moments is how I get to my grief. So much more tolerant of listening to people and their trials and tribulations of just what's happening their lives because I just appreciate the frailty of life and how fragile it is, how fleeting it is. I have a new appreciation on what's important.

And Anderson, I want to thank you for giving Charlie a voice. because you gave them the opportunity to help others. And I know that's what it wants.