Adam Richard Siegel, April 21, 1986 - March 29, 2016

My heartfelt thanks for all the kind words and sentiments that so many of you have sent and shared with me. I hope that you’ll indulge me, and by proxy, Adam, for this post. I told him that you are all friends and that I needed to share a few thoughts and make clear how deeply I loved him, as did his mother and wife. Adam left no great mark of achievement that will resound down the ages but his daughter, Kaiden Amber, is a beautiful and precocious 4 year old but his lucid and kind moments bound him to us in love over eighteen desperate years of trying to find him help and to make him want and be able to help himself. I don't ask for replies of sympathy and kindness, so many of you have already generously offered them already, rather to read this post and perhaps remember Adam.

Today, we saw, for the first time, the small but very nice attached house that Adam purchased only a month ago with money from a settlement of a car accident. The house was his choice and it is where he died yesterday. We adopted his cat, Domino, and my daughter drove him in his carrier back to NY along with Kaiden. My wife, daughter-in-law and I went to the funeral home to spend our last hour with Adam, still very handsome but cold and lifeless and by now, as I write, he is ashes.

If you met Adam you might not have liked him. He was difficult, most especially for those who loved him, but he could also be passionate and entertaining. His mental illness led to his self medication and ultimately the loss of his life when he abruptly changed his drug of choice to heroin in the last week.

In first grade an astute teacher recognized that Adam had an inability to sound words phonetically so he received special help that made him a good reader and writer. Later in grade school, his California test confirmed that he had genius level abilities in Spatial Cognition and High Superior ability in Mathematics and other areas. He spent less than 3 months, total, in High School but easily earned his GED afterwards. By the time he turned 18, Adam had been in ten or more rehabs, at least six serious overdoses where he was admitted to hospitals for weeks or months and had spent six months in jail for shoplifting because the judge agreed that he was safer there than on the street. In 2003 I found Adam comatose and I called 911 while lifting him off of the couch to administer rescue breaths. I had been to the edge of that terrible place where a parent loses their child but I gained a reprieve that ended a little more than 12 years later.

Adam was an excellent cook and his most consistent work experience was in restaurants. He loved to take over a kitchen and cook for our family but especially for his wife, before and during their marriage. Adam's mother loved him unconditionally, his wife desperately tried to change the course and trajectory of his life and though their divorce was inevitable, he died married. My daughter and I took a harder line with him, trying to make him accountable for his actions and demanding that he treat us with respect that led to his estrangement with her but that distance saved her.

His mental illness, fueled by drug use, made him so very difficult, but he was my boy, my son, the only one I ever or will have had I battled with my wife and her family about their constant enabling and intervention (and I was guilty of enabling in the early years) but that slate has been washed clean as all we are left with are memories and sadness.

I still don't know how I could have helped Adam. The Mental Health profession failed him miserably because they considered him a lost cause. To his last day I tried to rally my family to a constant and consistent approach in dealing with Adam but nothing worked. Ultimately, I failed Adam, not for lack of love or effort but because I could never find meaningful help or figure out how to reach him.

Adam's pain and torment have ended, and so too, to some extent, has ours but our grieving, I suspect, will never end. Treasure your children and do a better job of figuring out how to reach them and help them when needed. I pray that none of you ever experience the demons that Adam had but his lesson to us all is to love and appreciate while you can, life isn’t a given.

Again, thanks for your kindness and allowing me to post this and no responses are needed.

Pete