I've spent the better part of the past year looking for him. Hoping, wishing, praying, that he was alive and well. I even hired a private detective, for the two weeks I could afford to pay his fees.

Then six weeks ago, we got a phone call from Joe Bowen, Adam's uncle. Telling us that Tim was alive and in Miami. The very fact that Joe didn't say that Tim was okay told me everything I needed to know. Tim had slipped even farther into the darkness.

I am determined to find my son again and bring him home.

I flew to Miami to get Tim and almost died when I saw him. He was so ragged looking that I wouldn't have recognized him if Joe hadn't been sitting next to him.

It was all I could do not to break down right then and there.

Now I am sitting next to his bed watching as he writhes in agony. Once he realized that I wasn't going anywhere this time, he finally agreed to let me help him. And true to his stubborn nature he wants to do this the hard way. With no medical help. Which means he has spent the better part of the past six weeks in pain as his body begs for more of the drug it has become dependent upon.

"Mama," the pain in his voice is like a knife to my heart. I can't help him. All I can do is sit here and watch him suffer. "Mama, please. Make it stop. Make the pain go away," he begs over and over.

"Oh, baby. I'm sorry. I can't. I can't," I tell him time and again as I stroke his face, his hair, any part of him I can reach, trying to calm him. Help him stay connected and focused through the worst of the pain.

As he curls in on himself I drop to my knees beside his bed and do something I haven't done since he was five, and I suffered my first miscarriage. I thought I'd lost my faith that horrible day. But here, now, I feel I have no other recourse than to ask for help from powers greater than I. I pray.

"God, please help him. Take this pain from him so that he can be made whole again," I have a death grip on his arm as I feel the tension building in him.

He's been going through cycles of pain. Some worse than others. This one feels like a bad one. He rolls from his side onto his back and arches up, with just the crown of his head, his elbows and the heels of his feet touching the mattress, his mouth open in a silent scream of agony.

My scream is not so silent. "Why, God? Why are you doing this to him? What did he do to deserve this punishment?" I demand of the ceiling. "Please help my baby. Please!" I beg as I bury my face in the sheets.

I don't know how much time has passed when I notice a difference in his breathing and the muscles under my hand are no longer so tense.

I open my tear swollen eyes and see that he has fallen into a restless slumber.

"Thank you, God," I whisper. "Thank you for allowing him some peace from this torment."

"Irene?" David asks as he steps into Tim's room.

"Yes?" I respond wearily.

"Let me sit with him for a while. You won't do him any good if you get sick," David offers as he moves to help me up off the floor.

"No!" I whisper emphatically. "I won't abandon him again," I struggle against my husband as he tries to make me get up off the floor.

"Irene. Irene, please," David begs. "Let me help. If I'm here he won't think he's been abandoned," he grabs my face. "Please. Go lie down for a while. When he wakes I'll send Joshy to wake you. Okay?"

I bite my lip as I gaze at my sleeping son and realize that David is right. If I'm to help Tim, then I must stay healthy. "Okay," I agree with a nod. "But no more than two hours, David. I mean it. I want to be woken after no more than two hours."

"Okay. Two hours," he kisses me on the forehead and gently pushes me out the door.

I take one last look at Tim's pain-ravished body and feel the hot tracks of tears as they course down my face. I can't help but think of how very different this could all be if I had only seen that Tim felt unloved for so very long.

When I get to my room I realize that there is no way I'll be able to sleep, so I pull out my old journals and reread them. I started keeping a journal after I found out I was pregnant with Tim. The first entry is from Mother's Day 1973. Twenty one years ago exactly. I was so young and scared. But hopeful too. Hopeful that my unborn child would be everything I wasn't. And he is. He's smarter than me and has the potential to be something far greater than I could ever have dreamed of for myself or him.

I flip through the remaining pages and am shocked that I wrote so little about Tim. Most of the entries were about how overwhelmed I was feeling. Tim was the kind of child that had to do everything on his own and he was never still for very long. It was very frustrating, especially after Josh was born. Josh was so sick when he was a baby that I couldn't take him out much. That meant that Tim had to stay home a lot too.

The entries after Josh was born make Tim seem like a troublemaker. They are all about how he had either argued with David or gotten Josh upset. While Tim was complained about, Josh was fawned over. Every word I wrote about Josh was complementary. I never had a kind word for Tim after his fifth birthday.

The proof of Tim's claims cuts me deep. I just stare at the words as pain squeezes my throat, my heart, as I realize how very badly I treated my oldest son.

No wonder he turned to drugs after Adam's accident. He felt that he couldn't turn to us, and in fact he couldn't. David and I were blind to his pain. His need to be loved.

I am determined to try to put this to rights. I pull out a new journal and begin to write. I tell Tim everything I have ever felt for him, starting with how scared I was at finding out that I got pregnant the first time I ever had sex. And ending with the feeling of being overwhelmed after Josh's birth. How difficult it was having delivered him early and then the struggle to keep him healthy.

By the time I finish filling up the first book, more than five hours has passed. I knew David wouldn't come to get me in two hours.

I leave my room and make my way back to Tim's, only to find it empty. Both David and Tim are gone.

"David!" I run from the room yelling. "David! He's gone. Where is he? David!"

"Irene? What's wrong?" David asks as he comes bounding up the stairs.

"Where's Tim? You were supposed to be watching him," I get right in his face. "So where is he? Why aren't you with him?" I demand as I pound on his chest with both fists.

"He was asleep so I went downstairs to fix Josh lunch," he replies with a confused frown capturing my fists in his hands.

"I told you not to leave him alone," I say tears filling my eyes.

"He was asleep, Irene," David restates. "I didn't see the harm in going downstairs for just a minute or two."

"Didn't see the harm?" I demand. "The harm is that he woke up and found himself alone so he thought we abandoned him again. That's what the harm is!" I shout pulling my hands free from his grasp.

"How far do you really think he could have gotten, huh?" David asks. "He's in no condition to leave the house. You know that," he reaches out to try and stroke my face. I can't stop myself from flinching away from his touch.

"That's not the..." I start when we hear a moan coming from the bathroom. I push past my husband to find the source of the sound and find Tim on the floor, David hot on my heels. There is a slowly spreading pool of blood coming from cuts on his forearms. And a bloody razor blade lying next to him.

"Tim! What have you done?" I moan as I fall to my knees to try and stop the bleeding. David drops beside me, his breath a hot exhalation on my neck.

"Oh, God," David whispers. His horror, odd as it sounds, grounds me. I am no longer the only one who understands the depths of our son's pain, now. More than words, this bloody deed has shown him what I've been trying to tell him for years.

"Needed...to...feel...alive," Tim pants. He turns his face away from us but I can still see the pain he's in, in the tension of his shoulders.

"Oh, baby," I whisper as we clean him up. "Why won't you let us help you?"

"Don't...need...you..." he replies as we begin to bandage his wounds. "Don't...love..."

"Of course we love you!" David tells him.

"I don't... love you," he corrects bitterly, the words broken but no less intense for that.

I choose to ignore it. Everything he did as a child, even as a young man, has been a testament to his yearning for love, his hopeless love for us, the parents he believed didn't care for him. "I know we've hardly shown it, but we do love you Tim. You're our son. I carried you under my heart for nine months," I whisper against his hair.

As we start to help him up, his eyes cloud over and he slowly starts to cry.

He has slipped as far into the darkness as I'm willing to allow. I decide right then that I will find a way to follow him and show him how to find the light again.

"Oh, baby. Please let me in," I plead as we lay him down on his bed and I curl up along his side, my head on his chest. David pulls the desk chair over to the bed and sits down. Watching over both of us.

As I lay there listening to his ragged breathing and watching him sleep, I make a vow to never again let him think I don't love him. I do. More than life itself. He has my utmost respect and admiration that he could have come as far as he did on as little as David and I were able to provide, emotionally. But that has to change. Somehow, we must find the means to bring Tim back from the brink he has found himself on. I am determined to rescue my son and become not only his mother again, but also his friend.