He called me from a bus station and asked if I could send him a pair of shoes. I asked why he needed shoes when he’d told me he was staying with a friend. There was a long silence, and then he said, “Grandpa, I’m trying to get out.” He told me he’d been using the money for something he couldn’t stop buying, and the $400 had only made it easier to hide. I asked where he was, and he gave me the name of a town nearly three hours away. Then he asked me not to tell his mother.
I drove there the next morning instead of sending money. He was sitting outside with a backpack and everything he owned inside it. He looked exhausted, but for the first time in two years he wasn’t asking me to pay for something. He told me he’d finally realized the money wasn’t helping him survive—it was helping him stay exactly where he was. I called my daughter from the car and told her we needed to talk, and she was furious until she heard him say he wanted help. We agreed that nobody would give him cash anymore, but nobody would abandon him either.
I paid for the motel that night and drove him to an appointment the next morning. He started working with a counselor and found a small job a few weeks later. I still speak to him every Sunday, but I don’t send the $400 anymore. My daughter eventually told me she understood why I’d kept helping him, even though she wished I’d told her sooner. She said the monthly calls had been the only reason she knew he was still reaching for somebody. I thought I was keeping him alive with four hundred dollars a month, but when he finally asked me for something money couldn’t buy, I realized what he had really been asking me for all along.
