You want to scream
You want to cry
You want someone to tell you why
All the hope that's in your heart
Is not enough
You hit your knees
You shake your fists
Oh it's the deepest wound there is
When you can't help the one you love

-- performed by terri clark

This entry is mostly aimed at the parents out there, but I truly believe everyone can take something important away from it.

I'll start with my son Justin, who today turns 16 years old. If you've followed this journal for a while, you know that Justin now lives with my mother because he and his father just couldn't stop butting heads on a daily basis. I thought that by separating them, they could shift their focus to just relating as two individuals, rather than engaging in a constant power struggle.

It seems that has not happened at all, and if anything, the gap is widening.

A month or so ago, my mother drove Justin out to Terrell because he had some money in a savings account that he wanted to withdraw to pay for his driver's ed class. Justin erroneously believed that the account was solely in his name, but it wasn't. The Ex's name was also on the account, and his signature would be required to access the money, since Justin was underage.

My mother drove Justin to his dad's house, where The Ex proceeded to behave in a manner that I once would have described as uncharacteristic, but now I see it as all too familiar a sign of the type of person he has become. At first, he refused flat out to sign the withdrawal slip, claiming the money was for Justin's "college education" (mind you, we're talking under $200 here). He argued and argued, then finally, took the slip and signed it.

Justin and my mother headed back to the bank, whereupon the teller looked at The Ex's signature and declared "it doesn't match". Justin insisted his father had just signed the slip, and asked the bank to call him to confirm this.

The Ex told the teller that he did not want Justin to have the money. She handed the phone to Justin, and The Ex told him that he had deliberately signed the withdrawal slip incorrectly to keep Justin from getting the money.

Needless to say, this event has all but ruined Justin's attitude toward his father. He has stopped calling him, doesn't want to speak to him at all, and insists that should his dad call him today for his birthday, that the minute he hears his voice, he will hang up the phone.

My mother wrote me a letter and in it, she talked about how Justin feels that his father has turned his back completely on him, that the new wife has played a role in this, and that I am the only parent who loves him. I probably have seen Justin only a couple of times more often than The Ex has since he moved in with my mother, but the difference is in how we relate when we talk on the phone or see each other.

Justin brags, and I see insecurity. The Ex, however, sees arrogance and self-centeredness.

I recognize that Justin is a child in need of something very, very simple: solitude and individual attention. Being at my mother's, where there are no other children to contend with, has brought out a side of him that I have rarely seen before. He's more calm, growing more patient and pleasant as he grows equally taller (5'10" already!), and being responsible at his part-time job.

This little scene over the bank account was ridiculous on the surface, but indicative of the sudden need for control with which The Ex has become obsessed. He just cannot bring himself to do anything that would make Justin happy. He thinks he is teaching him some important lesson, when in reality, he is just trying to punish Justin for failing to fulfill his baseball dream.

He cannot see that bit by bit, he is shredding what little threads of a relationship they might have had left to mend back into whole cloth.

Let me tell you the story in The Ex's family history that exemplifies where I fear this is all headed. I don't know the finer points of the story, but the parts I do know are enough for you to get the idea.

The Ex's grandfather, PawPaw, who he loved more than I think I've ever seen a child love a grandparent, had a son with whom he'd had a "falling out", whose name I cannot remember (since the first time I ever heard about him was when I heard this story!!) so we'll call him George. The son moved overseas to Germany some years ago, and the two had stopped speaking completely.

PawPaw was dying. The family had gathered around to show their love in his last few moments of life, but PawPaw seemed restless, unable to relax and let go of this world.

Finally, one of the family members present sensed the cause for PawPaw's lingering. He was waiting for something - someone. She leaned over and whispered in his ear, "George called, and he said to tell you that he loves you and wishes he could be here with you".

With that merciful lie floating through his last moments of consciousness, PawPaw finally closed his eyes and passed peacefully away.

I'd hate to think that one day, the man on his death bed waiting for a call from his estranged son will be none other than my ex-husband.

I have tried to explain to Justin that we learn how to be parents from our own parents, who have learned from our grandparents, and that when the only examples they have are bad ones, it can be hard to know exactly how to behave. I challenged him to be the one to break the chains of his history here, and work at having a better relationship with his own children.

Only time will tell if he will succeed or fail.

Until then, I watch with an ache in my heart for my son, who wants nothing more than for his father to just love him.

I've been wanting to write about this sense of helplessness as a parent for a while, but I kept putting it off, until the issue was forced by a larger, uglier event.

Tonight, I came face to face with my own parenting demons, and the anxiety and abject fear I have lived with for the past few hours has put me in this chair at 4 a.m., by turns relieved and anguished over what almost came so very, very close to tearing my heart right from my body.

My mother called me about 10 p.m. last night from her cel phone. I thought she was returning Justin's call (he's been over here this week), so I handed the phone straight to him. A few minutes of listening to her, and he handed the phone back to me.

"Shelley?" She pauses, and I hear a sound in her voice that I have not heard since the early morning hours of February 16, 1992. I hold my breath, suddenly afraid of what might come next.

"The first thing I want to tell you is that Scott is okay." My heart's rhythm still does not slow one iota; in fact, it begins chattering wildly in my chest, and I find myself sinking slowly to my knees.

"He is on his way to the hospital. He was in a car accident. I was able to talk to him, but he's bleeding from his head." My own blood is pounding in my ears now, and I feel faint. A little voice is whimpering in my head, "No, not this, not this again."

"One of his friends died. He was on a motorcycle, and Scott's car was totalled." I am completely on the floor now, trying not to scream, trying not to relive my sister's death in this horrible moment. I am confused, I don't understand: were they racing? Did one crash and the other, following too closely behind, was forced off the road? I don't have the breath available to ask the questions.

She tells me the hospital he's being taken to, and I'm off the phone, rushing around trying to find my clothes, my keys, extra packs of cigarettes because I know I will need to chain-smoke for God only knows how many hours tonight. I'm trying not to scare Justin, poor Justin whose birthday is in danger of being forever stained by a family tragedy too similar to the one that permanently scarred my father's birthday.

I am by turns screaming, sobbing uncontrollably, and trying to suddenly remain calm for Justin's sake. He's gathering his things to take home, we head for the truck, and I run back inside at the last minute to look up a phone number online which I threw away a few months ago, determined as I was to never, ever use it again. I find it odd now that I thought of him first, but I frantically scribbled the number down and stuffed it in my purse for reasons I can't explain.

The drive is hellish. An hour away, but I make it in 40 minutes. I'm pushing the truck as hard as it will go, and all the while, I'm trying to convince myself that they aren't really just waiting for me to be there in person to tell me the horrible, awful truth that my son is dead.

I finally screech up to the emergency room entrance, and see Scott's dad (who I had called hysterically before I left) walking out, and am a little relieved to at least see a smile on his face. This is a good sign.

But when I get to the room and Scott sees me, the tears well up in his eyes and he reaches for me, and I am hugging him and crying too, so damn happy to see that my baby boy, who is almost twenty-one now, is sitting upright and breathing between his sobs as he hugs his mother with so much fierceness that I feel my heart breaking into a thousand pieces.

My own mother showers us with Kleenex as I carefully put my hands on his head and arms and chest, checking for injuries, noting two new tattoos (sigh), a huge knot behind his left ear, a section of his arm which appears to be burned (apparently from the airbag), and finally, when I'm convinced that there is nothing life-threatening to be found, I manage to ask what happened.

He was sitting at the stop sign where Clark Trail runs into Matthew Road. That portion of Matthew is poorly lit, so he looks left, looks right, then looks left again. The only thing he sees are two headlights quite a distance down the road. He proceeds into the intersection, preparing to turn left, so he has to go across the lanes to the other side of the street.

Suddenly, he and his two friends hear the high-pitched squeal of rubber, and look to their left a third time just as a motorcycle plows into the side of the car (the police later estimated the speed of the motorcycle at the time of impact at 150 mph). The car crumples inward, pinning the leg of one passenger in the back between the door panel and the seat, and sending the car into a tailspin. The driver's side door is caved in, trapping Scott between it and the console, and both airbags have popped open, causing a momentary blindness of white.

When the car stops spinning and the air clears a little, Scott is hit with the sudden realization that he knows the person on the motorcycle. He's not really sure how he knows - maybe he saw his face right before the crash? - but he knows. He and his friend Shawn manage to climb out of the passenger side. Scott runs over to the body on the ground, screaming the name of his roommate, Ricky.

Ricky, who just got his brand new motorcycle that morning after his father signed for it.

Ricky, who left his helmet at the house, sitting on the floor.

Ricky, whose face is now unrecognizable to Scott.

Their friend Nathan (still stuck in the back of the car which is now rolling aimlessly across the road) is screaming for help, and they rush over to try to get him out. The paramedics are already there (the fire station was just down the street, and they heard the crash), trying to get the "jaws of life" ready to use to release Nathan from the car. Scott and Shawn don't wait for the paramedics; they literally rip the car door off, and as Nathan's leg is released and circulation returns, he screams louder. His leg is broken, and the paramedics rush to get him into an ambulance.

Scott is back at Ricky's side, crying. "Ricky, I didn't see you! Please don't die, Ricky. I never saw you coming."

But it's too late. Ricky is gone forever.

We are all crying now. Scott knows on a conscious level that he did not knowingly or unwittingly do anything to cause this tragedy, but the psychological and emotional impact of being involved at all in the death of a friend while surviving himself is clearly eating him up from the inside, and those who love him most are helpless to find the words to comfort him.

"How can I ever look his parents in the eye? How can they look at me and not hate me for still being alive when Ricky is dead?"

I tried to explain to him that at the moment, Ricky's parents were probably dealing with their own inner demons. I can't imagine how I would feel if I were his father right now. It has to be incredibly gut-wrenching to know that you helped your son buy a motorcycle in the morning, only to have him dead that night from riding it far too recklessly. There isn't a parent alive who wouldn't be suffering tremendous guilt over that.

And I know how I feel at this moment, with only my imagination to tell me how destroyed I would be if my own son were dead. If my pain is only a third of theirs, then their suffering must be simply incomprehensible.

Yes, I am so very thankful my son is alive, but the shock of what might have happened is still very real for me. I keep putting myself in that car with him, imagining his fear, the noise, shards of glass flying over his face. The devastation of seeing his best friend die like that, and the accompanying what-ifs of wishing he could turn back time and choose to drive down a different road - these are horrible things to contemplate, and as a parent, I wish more than anything that I could erase these memories from his mind.

But just as Scott is helpless to do anything but relive this awful tragedy, I am helpless to ease his pain or speed his recovery. There is nothing worse about being a parent than the inability to take away emotional pain from your children.

Except the knowledge that in a single instant, they can be snatched from you forever.