My youngest son (32) is going through a difficult divorse....

[whistle]

...after seven years of marriage. I have two bright and beautiful grandchildren, Alex (5) and Jacob (3) from that marriage. The last three months have been very difficult to watch, but this morning my son sent me this poem which he titled "Thoughts":

THOUGHTS

When a mom makes a mistake, the kids pay for it.
When a dad makes a mistake, the kids pay for it.
When the kids make a mistake, the kids pay for it.
The only person who doesn't make mistakes is dead.

Our enemy is our friend.
May we wish for others
what we wish for ourselves.

If we can ask our body to do nothing for half an hour,
perhaps we can ask our body to do something for half an hour.
The centre of discipline: the degree to which we are able to hold ourselves in front of a challenge.

We may understand our knowing,
but we can't know our understanding.
We begin by doing nothing.
Then, we move to doing something.

Turn a seeming disadvantage
to your advantage.
The greater the seeming disadvantage,
the greater the possible advantage.

Before we move from A to B,
better to know we're at A.
What we hear is the way that we hear.

Suffer cheerfully.
Sometimes God hides.
An end may be a finish,
a conclusion or a completion.

[MADem]

1. He sounds a little...suicidal to me

Get him to some counselling, keep him away from booze, don't screw around--the time for some sort of intervention is now. That poem sounds like "I'm better off dead" to me, with a "And I'll take the bitch with me" for good measure.

Of course, I am no poetry professor, but that would set off alarms if I got that from anyone I know.

[whistle]

2. Thanks, I needed that honesty, I'm too close I suppose to see it...

..I'll approach him on it, because I understand that he is seeing a counselor and so when I got this this morning I became distressed and very concerned. I tend to curb my own reactions to situations as over reacting, or staying out of something that is not directly my business.

[EC]

3. I read it that way too....is he normally in the habit of sending or

even reading poems? If not there is a reason he was looking up poems. Maybe ask him to come and stay with you a while, so he's not going home to an empty house everyday, and feeling like he's lost everything and everyone.

[Acryliccalico]

4. Definatly sounds bad

Get him in to see somebody. Tell him that children hurt the most about things and feel they are responsible for everything. He needs to see someone, if not for himself then for them.