Home for the holiday?

My wife got a text message from our son yesterday in which he asked if he was coming home for Thanksgiving. He said that "all his friends" from sober living were going home for Thanksgiving. So he wondered if he was coming home, too.

This caught us by total surprise, because having our son come home for Thanksgiving hadn't really entered our mind. When he agreed to stay in sober living through at least November, we assumed that meant he'd be in California for Thanksgiving. Maybe that was wrong on our part, but that's what we thought. And that's what my wife told him when she replied to his text message.

To be perfectly honest, we don't have the money to fly our son home for Thanksgiving and then fly him back. The expense of rehab and sober living has drained us financially. A flight from Palm Springs to Detroit at holiday time, especially on this short notice, would be completely unaffordable--if there was even a flight available.

We also wonder if in fact "all" of our son's sober living friends are indeed going home for the holiday. We find it hard to believe that everyone has the means to fly home for Thanksgiving and then fly back. These guys are from all over the country, and airfare isn't cheap. It could be that our son is just homesick; or maybe he's looking for an excuse to come home for whatever reason. We don't really know.

When my wife texted him back yesterday afternoon asking him if all his friends were really going home for Thanksgiving, our son never replied. Eighteen hours later, he still hasn't replied. So he's probably angry with us. Or maybe "all" his friends aren't really going home for Thanksgiving. Who knows. But all of this was a big stressor for me on an otherwise beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Maybe we'll hear back from our son today. Or, maybe we won't. In any case, him coming home or Thanksgiving isn't really an option. And we're reasonably sure that someone he knows will still be in Palm Springs over Thanksgiving, and that they can do something to celebrate the holiday.

This whole incident is just another example of why it's so hard to detach myself from my son's addiction. There are constantly things coming up that require some sort of action by either my wife, myself, or both of us. The only way to eliminate these issues would be to cut our son off completely; and I don't think we can really do that at this point in his recovery.

Until our son is totally self-sufficient, I think we have to be there for him to help with certain things. (Without enabling, of course.) But as long as we are always there to help him with certain things, our son may never become totally self-sufficient. It's a big, fat Catch-22 for sure.

On a brighter note, I went to an Al-Anon meeting with my wife yesterday for the second week in a row. These are the first two Al-Anon meetings I've ever been to, and I have found much comfort and support there so far. I had been to Nar-Anon meetings in the past, but found them to be much more depressing. I usually left those meetings feeling worse than I did when I walked in. Maybe it was just a "bad" meeting that I was attending. In any case, I eventually stopped going altogether. But I will keep going to this Al-Anon meeting. It really helps to share with others, and to hear the problems others in similar situations are having in their lives. It helps to know that I'm not alone.