I arrived home late Monday night to find Morgen in his chair in the hallway of our downstairs. Frightened, he told me of the missile crisis in Korea. He also spoke of people killing police officers (this was before he was sited at the Capitol for improper backing and possible DUI). Different police officers who had called me at work Tuesday to ask if I was okay, as Morgen had informed them I had been killed by his dad, before they took him to the county jail. And before I brought him back from jail to the hospital and ‘zombies eating brains’ downstairs in the bedroom. The young adults are vulnerable; who was I not to believe him?
I took a deep breath and walked in to find only an untidy, comfortably appointed bedroom. When I broke it to him that no one was there, he reacted in horror, jaw dropping, raising both hands to cup his cheeks. Splashing water on Markus and Skip and I saying, ‘I have to save you from the zombies!’
We sat together in the middle of the night, looking at heart rate monitors, repeating the same conversation over and over, his memory constantly lapsing (his doctor assured us he would be fine). My son's independence looked an awful lot like loneliness.
His doctor called me his guardian angel - untrue. But even though he's not over the hardest part yet, I suspect I wouldn't mind being, as he put it, ‘Morgy's Angel.’
