My Boy, Alexander

Where are the words? I wonder. Where are the words?

My throat is parched and my tongue lies like a slug in my mouth. My fingers are thick and clumsy on the keyboard. I am only writing replies to sympathy e-mail and notes of gratitude for the many arrangements of flowers that have stood in their beauty, and are heavy in a funereal fragrance, on my kitchen counter. I am evading. Procrastinating.

I take a deep breath. The words have been there all along, I now see, but I have been too broken to set them down on paper. They are too impossible to pronounce. Too real for reality. If I type them, I will tremble, go down on my knees in front of this wall I am too frightened to climb. If I type them—they will be true.

Here it is then. Unadorned in its truth and its pain. Unbelievable. For the last week, I have been avoiding it by substituting other words, avoiding those from which, in the end, I cannot outrun. The pieces of text that crossed my computer screen over the last seven days were no version of “Linda’s Letters,” or part of my newest book, or business e-mail, or even editing work for a client.

No, instead, I have been trying for something else, trying as hard with my own being, and with what some might call a brave determination. This is the most difficult piece I have written in my life.

I am writing my oldest son’s obituary.

The words I need unspool on the computer screen before me.

I drop my head. And now it all comes to me: at two o’clock in the dark morning, here in my pajamas, the words come in a rush. The memories. The love. His terrible pain, pain that I could not solve or banish. I gag and want to vomit. I put on my bathrobe and go down to my office. I dread what now must come.

My oldest son is dead.

He killed himself this past September first, and left a scrawled suicide note that read: “This is the only way. I love you all.”

He will never have a job again, or a wedding, or a wife whom he treasures, nor will he deliver to me a second wave of grandchildren. He will only have a granite marker that says:

This epitaph will be carved into stone, never to be changed. His life is now as immutable as the sea. As unchanging as the ground over his soft gray ash, under an earth which will soon freeze solid and bind him to its breast.

I am crying. Of course. Would you expect anything else? Suicide has smashed into my life another time, a wave that sweeps away everything standing before it: a violent storm surge in a hurricane.

When my mother killed herself she was forty-five and I was twenty-one.

When my son killed himself it was just before his fortieth birthday, when I was sixty-nine. He left behind him a life mostly unlived. A life wasted.

My son is dead.

I will go on living, but it seems true that I am left with nothing but the grief. It eats away at my gut, boiling there, and bile rises in my throat again and again with all the words that cannot express what I feel.

Yet now: here are some words—sure and clear and true. I write them tonight into the silence of our home. I want you to know my Zan as I knew him, and I am trying to hold onto him the way a camera captures a person mid-stride, passing through an instant of his or her life so quickly that the image nearly blurs, but instead stands still for a moment, caught and held. A photographer’s finger is quicker than the eye. Here is what I will send to the newspaper, this thin gray banner I’ve created—a memorial, so that other people will know that my boy is gone.

Alexander Sexton Freund, beloved son of Linda Gray Sexton and John G Freund, died of a long illness on the first of this last September. He was only thirty-nine and made his home in the area for thirty-five of those years. In addition to his parents, he leaves behind many treasured family members: one of the most important relationships in his life would always be the one he shared with Nicholas Gray Freund, his brother, with whom he bonded in an abiding love; his stepmother and stepfather, and his two aunts, as well as myriad nephews, nieces and cousins.  Zan also touched his closest friends in a major way, both those he met at Connecticut College, from which he graduated cum laude in Government in 2006, and many from Menlo School nearby, with whom he kept in close touch from high school until his death this year.  After four years at “Conn,” Alexander joined up with high school buddies David Nemetz, Dave Finocchio, and Brian Goldberg to co-found Bleacher Report, which became the largest independent website devoted to sports. Personable and gregarious, Zan was especially good with people and was responsible for building the company’s “community.” Bleacher was eventually acquired by the Turner Broadcasting division of Time/Warner and today attracts hundreds of millions of unique visitors a month.  As a teen, he could often be found in hang-outs like The Dutch Goose and the “O”, scarfing down hamburgers and, along with his friends, trying to score the occasional beer. Anyone who came under his influence was attracted by his quick wit and his kindness. With gentle warmth he drew people to his side, and soon his large group of close friends adopted a new appellation for itself: “The Zan Clan.”  He was passionate about a wide variety of subjects and had a deep love of the guitar, playing it for hours in his bedroom. He often created new melodies: any kind of music drew him in, either instrumental or vocal—but the group Phish was his favorite, and he often followed them around the U.S. to attend their concerts.  Reading, too, gripped him and he often immersed himself in his favorite writer, Stephen King, reading and rereading all of his work. Every novel by King eventually wound up on his atypically organized bookcase; Alexander loved King’s short stories, those in which King often eschewed the “horror” aspect of some of his work and went for deeper emotions. He loved to debate the value of this writer’s work with his mother, who was also an author, and he often drifted through the house quite happily, book in his hands and draped in his cozy folds of his comforter, which he called his “puff,” dragging it along behind him.  Shooting hoops with both his father and Nicholas, as well as the Zan Clan, made him especially happy. Zan was a wizard at foul shots, and had to give basketball handicaps to his father throughout his life. To his mother’s horror, his favorite T.V. show as he was growing up was “Beavis and Butt Head.”  His step-parents were pivotal in his life, as well: true to her generous nature, his stepmother took time out on her wedding day to help the perpetually disorganized Zan find matching socks, and taught Nicholas how to iron his dress shirt.  His stepfather took Zan and a close friend camping at Big Sur and Alexander discovered that he liked hiking, as well as his Mom’s baked beans alongside his perennial favorite—hot dogs.  The political scene fascinated him, and he had deep and enduring knowledge of every party and candidate—especially those whose philosophies went beyond the traditional. He was always able to defeat his opposition, who would often cry, “O.K., Zan! You win!”  He loved dogs, especially the family’s tribe of three Dalmatians, and he always had a sweet spot for his cat Doppler, an Abyssinian who followed him from room to room and slept at the foot of his bed. Zan was convinced by his mother that the dogs who eventually passed on from their home were waiting eagerly to greet him at the Rainbow Bridge. At the time, he almost believed her—but then did with certainty later in his life, when he discovered and held tight to a deep spirituality.  His religious background contained a richly unique combination of both Judaism and a touch of the Protestant faith his mother grew up with before she converted to her husband’s religion. Sabbath dinner became part of the Freund family’s rituals and Linda taught both boys the blessings for the candles, while John took on those for the handmade loaf of challah Linda had baked, and the wine.  Alexander and Nick both survived Hebrew school, and became bar mitzvah: on a sunny Saturday morning in 1996, Zan’s melodious chant of the day’s Torah portion in his pitch perfect voice warmed his father’s, mother’s and grandfather’s heart., But as was his wont, when the rabbi later asked Alexander whether he was looking forward to continuing his Jewish education, Zan retorted boldly that he’d had enough.  In addition to Judaism, his life was enriched by a unique combination of both his father’s Jewish heritage, as well as the Protestant rituals of his mother’s background. Christmas stockings and an exceedingly tall tree, which his family decorated just before the all-important day, were de rigueur. The family shared the holiday with relatives and Zan basked in Grandpa Al’s pleasure over the gifts he received from his grandsons. Zan will be missed intensely by his grieving family and close friends. Forever. His ashes will be interred at both the Los Gatos Memorial Cemetery and the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston. Donations in his memory may be made to The National Alliance on Mental Health or the ASPCA.

 My son is gone. I continue. I push back my chair and turn out the light. For now, I am finished. Zander be with me again. I was not ready to face the loss of my child. In the end, I have only this: I now know that mothers like me try hard to believe that their boy is at peace. I hope he has left behind his pain. At last.

Yours,