Suzanne in Oregon House, CA

I returned to the Sierra foothills to a small town called Oregon House and a community called Apollo, a center for the arts, after eleven years departure. This town is where Marco was born and raised until age eight when he went to live with his father and stepmother in the bay area.

There are a lot of memories, mostly besieging me in dreams, of Marco as a child. It was a rough period for both of us. I had several critical illnesses affecting my behavior and mental health. He was at a young age, open and vulnerable. I did the best I could, and a lot of mistakes were made.

Those mistakes were woven into Marco’s fate to develop schizophrenia and to take his life. Nothing can be changed and nothing can be different. I’ve learned to accept that over the past two years since Marco’s death.

Thus it is a bitter sweet home coming for me at age 65. I do not make many mistakes anymore and if I do I don’t repeat them. This lesson was burned into me by the suffering my son had to endure in his short life.