David

I

I'm pretty sure the saddest thing about David, and there were many crushingly sad things about him, was this: he was doomed before he was born. And from then on. The scars, at least the ones I was privy to, hinted at it. Cigarette burns from various family members. Large, twin keloids on the inside of his elbows where both arms had been pulled into the spinning wringer of an old-fashioned clothes washer until they got stuck there for who knows how long, the motor turning, until his grandmother arrived. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome pointed to his mother's impaired maternal instincts before his birth, and things never got any brighter with the arrival of her newborn son.

David's reputation preceded him. I typically was given an overview of each new resident of the group home, but I was told only very briefly about the one thing I really needed to know: David had bashed the head of a staff person at his previous residence into a table, over and over, even after the guy lost consciousness. I was stunned. The kids I worked with were challenging, but the house was set up for older "high-functioning" kids getting ready to leave the nest of agency care and move out on their own. We taught them things like how to balance a checkbook, take the bus, apply for a job, and function as grown-ups. We were single-staffed, working alone nearly all the time: one underpaid worker in a house with 8 teenage boys aged 16-21. They were men, really. Most had at least a lifetime's worth of experiences already in their young lives. Some were over 6 feet tall. Many were athletic. All were residents due to battles in their emotional lives, but most were in pretty good shape considering the chaos they had come from. They were here for last minute fine-tuning before inescapably becoming adults, and we were there to help them navigate the transition.

David had a grown-up body, but he also had the intellect of a small child and a powder keg of swirling emotions. The first day I met him, I noticed the vacant look in his eyes, one of them wandering off-angle as he spoke. His powerful build added to the sense of danger. Within an hour, he was leaning over my desk, breathing menacingly through his teeth, fists clenched at his sides. "I'm... gonna... grab... your... balls!" I calmly talked him down, as if a cougar had wandered into the office. I pictured his previous victim's limp body, head smashing, only a miracle keeping his skull intact, as I talked to David soothingly.

This was absurd. David's previous placement had 3 times the staffing, and someone was nearly killed. And they were used to working with tough kids over there, but David was unique. He was essentially a wild animal. If they couldn't control him over there, couldn't keep things safe, how in the world could we here. But the agency was responsible for him, and the staff person who had been assaulted refused to press charges, so there was nowhere else for him to go. My staff was seen as top-notch, and I was told that the agency felt living with older boys would be "safer." David had a history of allegedly acting out sexually with younger kids.

And he also had frequent seizures. The list just went on and on.

One day David walked into my office with a fork, working it angrily under his fingernail. "I've got to get this off!" he shouted. Was he really trying to remove his fingernail with a fork? It almost seemed surreal. I gently approached him, and took away the fork. Gratefully, no blood or apparent wound. I told him we would take him to the nurse to see why his nail hurt later when reinforcements arrived.

I led him to the living room TV, my savior on many occasions like this. Redirect, distract. I had work to do. Balancing the cashbox receipts. Planning menus and shopping lists. Checking endless documentation. Scheduling 24-hour staffing. Reading resumes of potential new-hires, and the case records of our latest arrivals. All the details of running a household with 8 challenging kids, along with the requirements of an enormous agency. David sat down to cartoons, which the other residents normally wouldn't have tolerated. But they had a stake in keeping David calm, too. Even without knowing all the details, their street smarts, or perhaps primitive instincts, told them that this wasn't a guy to mess with. So "Rugrats it is," buying me time to return to the office.

About ten minutes later, the fork episode fresh in my mind, I decided to check on David. He was in the kitchen hunched over the sink, his arm inside the garbage disposal nearly to his elbow. He was reaching for the disposal switch, which had been intentionally installed just out of reach to prevent a disaster. "I have to get the NAIL OFF!"

Another day, almost dream-like, I stood next to my Program Director at the curb of the busy four-lane street in front of the group home, while David, a few feet away, taunted us that he was going to run into the traffic that was whipping by. I asked the Director, "If he runs out there, are we going after him?" He didn't reply.

After weeks of what seemed like a nightmare that would never end, there was finally a treatment conference to try to decide what to do with David. I was at the meeting to provide some recent observations about David. 12 mental health professionals sat around the table: case managers, social workers, program representatives, both adult- and child-protective workers, all shaking their heads and passing the buck. Each had a reason they could turn him away. At age 20, he was too old to place in a program for children. He was not yet 21, so didn't qualify as an adult in another. His IQ was too low for some placements. His IQ was too high for others. He was violent. He was an alleged sexual predator. He had seizures. So many reasons to point across the table at someone else.

Eventually each agency or program had their say, and none would take David on. As mad as I was, I couldn't blame them. Finally, the County worker said, "Well we will iust have to wait until he breaks the law again, and then that will open up other possibilities." | raised my hand."As the person most likely to be the victim of his next crime, I have to say for the record that this is an unacceptable plan."

Two days later, we were told David would be moving out. I wasn't told where he was going, and I didn't ask. In a few months, David was dead from a seizure after being discharged into the community on his own. Did anyone think he was capable of managing his seizure medication?

II

Each of us has a line of ancestors. Years ago, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about this. There was that famous illustration, the

"Progression of Man," with a monkey, then an ape, then a hunched-over early human, then a club-carrying caveman, and finally a Modern Man with a briefcase. But in my mind, I tried to picture the hundreds and then thousands of human beings, the actual people, along this line going back through time. I would trace back...

Myself, then my father (whom I knew), then his father (whom I knew), then my great-grandfather (whom I know essentially nothing about), and then each successive generation back, one real, actual person at a time, like a column of soldiers slowly walking back through time. Further still to prehistoric primates, one by one, each a long lost relative. Over decades, then centuries, then millennia, then millions of years. There are, in fact, an almost infinite number of these lines (That "tree" with 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8,16, 32, 64...) made up of real people, and, earlier on, specific creatures that made up my actual lineage. I would try to get my brain around the fact that if I followed a specific line (for example father's father's father's father's.... or any line back through generations), that there was a very specific amphibian that had lived, and successfully mated to produce the next amphibian creature that literally made up my family. Their lives had ultimately led to mine.

Man. If there is such a thing as a miracle.

Each of us, and each person we meet, or dog we adopt, or bird we admire in a nearby maple tree, or even the maple tree itself, each had been created through the success of branch after branch of their particular lineage. Phew! We made it...

I think this is why history fascinates us, why family bonds can feel so strong, why murder is seen as abhorrent... It is the unconscious awareness of our fragile place in our own line, and the mystery that each creature around us occupies a similar place in theirs.

David's lineage was doomed to end with him, probably when alcohol damaged the very first few cells that began to define him. Decades after his death, I still think that this is what is most disturbing to me: that he never had the opportunity to take part in this sacred aspect of life. He was the end of the line.

It would be easy to say "it probably was for the best." given his damaged genetics, his hopelessly inadequate abilities to be a nurturing parent. It was "only natural" that he never had a child. And yet, as sad as his life was, it took place in an enormously larger context. Countless creatures who had escaped predators, at least long enough to create offspring. Primitive ancestors who struggled day after day to find food and avoid harm. Generations who had endured and survived slavery. Even David's mother, who had walked her own long and difficult path.

I'm pretty sure the saddest thing about David, and there were many crushingly sad things about him, was this: he was doomed before he was born. And from then on.