You know Sue and I have had a lot of conversation around the consequences of the murder charges, jail, bail conditions and the aftermath but one of the most amazing aspects of this time in our family’s life was it was kind of a re-boot.
When our kids were little we didn’t have a lot of money but our wealth was in our family core. That was always our strength.
While the two years of hell blew up our life in many ways, from the rubble we found that strength again in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
When addiction enters the life of a family there are so many losses. Security, family gatherings are different, behaviors are unpredictable. You can’t count on each other the way you used to.
So…when my sons turned themselves in to the police in June of 2008 and spent the next 16 months in jail, I got back the sons I used to know. They were clean, they were not doing drugs. Greg got his grade 12 equivalency, Kenny took parenting courses. They were the men I hoped they would be.
This was the ultimate sweet in the bitters. Kenny and Greg were instrumental in getting our business back up and running and working every day to help us rebuild in the years following the trial.
I will always be thankful for that time. And then slowly the cycle of addiction came back into our lives. They just could not stay away from the drugs. It was heartbreaking to say the least.
Sue and I will talk more about this in a future episode of Sweet Bitters but for now we want you to know there were many sweets for me, for Ken and for our family as a whole during that time that we were together again working to rebuild and live our new normal.