BY SUSAN BRADFORD

TUNNED, DAZED, AND PARALYZED, I held the empty bottle in my trembling hand. Three blue-and-yellow pills mocked me from the place they lay spilled across the kitchen counter. How had they managed to escape? Thoughts tumbled over themselves, playing sinister games with reality. Nothing made sense.

In a frantic effort to grasp meaning out of the tangled jumble in my mind, I walked into my son's room. His blue-and-brown bedspread lay crumpled at the foot of the water bed he and his dad had built together. His white uniform was laid out, ready for work at the convalescent center. Yesterday's school clothes lay scattered across the floor where they had been dropped the night before.

Suddenly my eyes riveted to the green letters glaring at me from the screen of his often-used computer. I hadn't even noticed them earlier. The words shot through my scrambled mind and lodged in the deep recesses of my heart.

It's hard to know what to say when you face death, but I thought I must say something . . . Suicide is not the answer, but maybe it is a better way than life . . . I want everyone concerned to know I love them--especially Jen*--I love you so much that love has taken over my intelligence. Scott Bradford.

The screen blurred. My fist came down on the taunting computer. I wanted to erase it, blot it out, destroy it somehow. My son. His seventeenth birthday only six weeks away. How could he? He hadn't even given me a chance to help. Why, God, why?

A Cry for Help
Like replay on a video, my mind flashed through the events of the past 20 minutes. At work, as counselor on the campus where Scott attended high school, I answered the phone as usual, "Susan Bradford speaking. How may I help you?"

"Mom," the urgent voice called me by the affectionate nickname many of the students used in our small school. "Jen says to tell you maybe you should check on Scott. He may need you pretty badly. She broke up with him at noon."

The phone dropped back into its cradle. I picked up my purse and walked out the door, grateful we lived just a block away. Stepping into the house, I headed straight for Scott's room. He was lying on his bed, still dressed in his dusty blue sweater and jeans. I reached to touch his arm. "Are you OK, son?"

"No." His voice was deep, but even. "She really hurt me, Mom."

"I know . . . "

"She doesn't love me anymore."

"I'm so sorry, son." My throat tightened. His face was pale; his hand cool to my touch. "You don't look as though you feel like going to work this afternoon. Would you like me to call and tell them you can't come in?"

His shoulders shrugged slightly. "It doesn't matter anymore . . . "

It always mattered to Scott. As a student he stood at the top of his class. As a worker he made every effort to be responsible. Something was dreadfully wrong. His reply was too complacent, too resigned, too matter-of-fact.

"Scott, I saw some pill bottles out on the counter when I came in. Did you take something?" I thought nothing of the pills until this moment. He often took medicine for allergies, never for anything else.

"Yes."

"What did you take, son?"

"Some codeine." My mind jumped to the new bottle of Fiorinal with Codeine No. 3 I had recently been prescribed for migraine headaches. Thirty of them.

"Do you have a headache?"

"No" . . . The little word and all it implied clicked in the register of my mind.

"Scott, how much did you take?"

"A whole bottle," he answered flatly.

"How long ago?"

"I don't know."

My legs weakened; my stomach cramped. I spun around and rushed down the hall, using the walls to keep my balance. My mind grasped for the number to call my husband. With shaking hands I dialed our own number instead. The busy signal still beeped in my ear when, miraculously, the door opened, and Larry walked in.

"Scott just took a bottle of pills!" My voice trembled as the cold, foreign words spilled into the air . . .

Suddenly I was alone. The pounding of my heart echoed through the empty silence. As I stood there in Scott's room, my thoughts abruptly were cut short. I was home, and they were gone! The confusion, the panic, the shock

. . . how had I not gone with them? Too shaky to drive, I made a quick call, and a friend drove me to the nearby hospital.

Another Chance
After the stomach pumping, I sat with my hand on Scott's leg as I watched an IV drip life into his veins and another machine monitored his blood pressure and heart rate. It had to be someone else sitting here. Not me. This morning a happy 16-year-old had left our home with a rose and a poem he had written for his girlfriend. Never in his life had he threatened suicide, been unduly depressed, let his grades drop, or lost interest in life. He fit in with the crowd, didn't drink, or take drugs . . . none of the classic symptoms. How could I possibly be prepared for this?

For a suspended moment I looked at this boy, my son, his blond hair damp from the violent vomiting, his beard growing just slightly, the in-style thing for teenage boys who could, his shoulders broad. Handsome, I thought, but so would all mothers. Irrationally, I wondered how any girl could walk away.

"Where's Jen?" he murmured.

Jennifer, dark-haired, sophisticated, beautiful. His first love.

I shut my eyes against the sting of tears. The screen behind my eyelids flashed pictures of a tiny newborn in an isolette. He had taken a breath of amniotic fluid. There was a 50-50 chance of survival, they said. Against the odds he pulled through then. Now this? How could he try to take the very life that God, his father, and I had given him?

His voice tugged my thoughts back. "Don't worry, Mom. This isn't your fault, you know." His words were slurred, but their meaning wasn't. "When you think about it, why should we keep on living? Even if we make a difference, it's for only a short time. With all the millions of people, how many lives can we actually touch? There's so much pain in this world anyway."

Unchecked tears streamed down my cheeks, "OK, son, you've given me reasons for wanting to die. Can you give me any reasons for living?"

"Love," he responded as he drifted back into his drugged sleep, waking occasionally to vomit . . . and ask for Jennifer.

Love. The one thing I truly felt I gave my children . . . in words, in touch, in every way I knew how. Perhaps somehow my caring had even contributed to Scott's sensitive nature and, thus, this.

The counselor side of me would have told anyone else, "Don't blame yourself; you are not responsible for the choices others make." But the counselor and the mother clashed dramatically that night. There is no logic in a mother's pain.

Thoughts . . . there seemed no escaping them. Tonya, our 19-year-old daughter, away at college, cried when I called. She was probably crying now, too. Tonya, such an intricate part of my heart, yet independent, feeling a part of us, yet alone. A big girl now, but still I longed to hold her close. Letting go . . . do we parents ever do it totally? Maybe just enough to allow our children to be all they can be. I looked up and met Larry's eyes. Our gaze locked, each of us searching the other for strength, for reason, for some kind of answer.

The shades finally lifted on a new day. Even before Scott left the hospital he stated emphatically, "I don't need counseling. That's for people who don't have a family like mine!" I counsel others, yes. Not my own son. Tears and debate, debate and tears. Finally: "All right, Mom; I'll go for you!"

Trust Restored
On our way to the counselor the next day Scott turned to me and asked, "Mom, I suppose you're going to take all the medicine out of the cupboard?"

"No, son . . ." My instincts wanted to protect him, watch him, check on him, somewhere close to 48 hours a day. "If I did, I'd have to lock up the razor blades and knives, put bars on your window, and take the car keys. Scott, you will always have the power to take your own life. I can't protect you from that. I'm just going to trust you won't do it again."

"Oh," he responded, but a light of confidence flickered behind his eyes.

Later that night some of his friends dropped in. "Can we rent a video, Mom?" he asked me privately. "Will you drive us down?" I looked into his eyes thinking momentarily only of their brilliant blue and thick lashes. Then back to his question.

"Don't you have your license?"

"Well, yes, but . . ."

"Don't you think the drugs have worn off by now?"

"Yes . . . "

"Here are the keys, son."

A smile. His response to my confidence in him. My stomach churned, but I knew I must give him back the control of his life, the sooner the better. He returned. Safely.

When everyone left, I felt it was time for us to talk. If only he would. Hours later, his words gushed out in gulping sobs, "Mom, I didn't mean to hurt you! I didn't mean to hurt Jen! Why can't she love me? I begged her not to leave!" A half scream, half cry erupted from a crater of anger and anguish within him. I felt the wetness of his cheek next to mine. Whose tears? His or mine?

"Cry, honey. Just cry . . ."

Then, softly, "Mom, have you ever knelt and begged someone to stay, and they just turned and walked out?"

"No, son, I haven't."

"God has . . . every time one of us walks away from Him" was his whispered reply, almost a prayer. And I knew that someday, someway, by the grace of that same God, we would heal.

Perhaps Scott himself said it best without even knowing it. On his computer he wrote, "Suicide is not the answer." Later in the hospital, when asked the reason for living, he replied, "Love." Suicide is not the answer. Love is.

Well said, son, well said.

Postscript: Years later when Scott reflected on this incident with his wife, Kim, he said, "When Mom handed me the keys to the car, I knew I would make it."

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*Not her real name.

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Susan Bradford is a pseudonym.