Hello to all. When I left you last, it was with eager antic­i­pa­tion, as my birth­day was the next day. To say that life changes on a dime seems so triv­ial yet so true. At 1:30 am on my birth­day, we received a fran­tic call. My hus­bands son had attempted to take his life. By the gods and angels that sur­rond him and a con­cerned girl­friends dad, he was found in time and life lighted to the hos­pi­tal. We have just returned from that jour­ney thru the night and the 24 hours since. He is okay. We are phys­i­cally tired and men­tally and spir­i­tu­ally weary. It is always amaz­ing to me, the world of med­i­cine. How they could grab this life back from the brink. It wasn’t a choice DJ wanted at first. As he became more coher­ent and awake he was able to say that he was glad he woke up. Sur­prised, he thought, but glad. I have watched him the last day or so and see that he still strug­gles with this sur­prise end­ing. He truly wanted to die. Just typ­ing this makes my heart race and my throat swell. He is safe…for today…but than what? The jour­ney that night, thru the wee hours of the morn­ing, not know­ing when we got there if he would be dead or alive, will live with me always. My hus­band was dri­ving, I think just to give him some­thing to do, but I knew he strug­gled with fear and ter­ror and anger and more fear and sim­ple unbe­liev­ing. What do you say to each other? We asked God to be with him. We asked God to be with us and his mother and her hus­band as we all hur­tled the 3 hours to reach him. And we talked about DJ, his life as a tod­dler, his life as a teenager, his life now. If only to keep him with us.The very very hard­est thing for me and his dad is know­ing now that we have done all that we can. Ulti­mately life is DJ’s to choose. We asked him not to go. We told him of our sor­row should he choose to go. But we can­not keep him alive, and that truly is the hard­est thing to know. I love life so that it is hard for me to com­pre­hend some­one so despon­dant and des­per­ate that dying seems the only choice. But it hap­pens. And it is sad and awful. The best birth­day gift I received is that DJ lives. The per­fect gift will be if he, soon, will choose life.