Until last weekend, I don’t think I had spent a total of 60 minutes of my life thinking about Amy Winehouse. I liked her music OK, but I found her brand of uglifying herself and her life unappealing. When, immediately after her death was announced, her parents and handlers said they didn’t see it coming (an opinion that they amended in subsequent days), my thought was only that how didn’t they see the train sliding off the rails. YouTube videos of some of her final concerts (Amy Winehouse’s Onstage Meltdown – YouTube http://bit.ly/oTQiZt) show an out-of-it performer stumble onstage and even drag a backup singer to take over the vocals. She became more famous for her mishaps than her music.
Then I started thinking about her parents. Her father has stepped forward to announce that he will start a foundation in her name for people with addictions. (His assessment of the British National Health’s facilities for treatment is likely incorrect, however. The National Treatment Agency disputed Mitch Winehouse’s claim that there is a two-year waiting list. They say 94% of people who request treatment receive it within three weeks.) In some way this gesture must be therapeutic for him. But there’s still the undeniable fact that his daughter is dead, forever and ever.
I’m not sure at all how parents deal with seeing their adult children self-destruct. Even many of us with absolutely normal kids spend a lot of time agonizing over their happiness. My friends and readers have been aware that my main focus this week (besides the debt ceiling) has been my kids, their significant others, and the bar exam. They have been studying all summer, and on Tuesday they got up very early and sat down to six hours of testing. They completed another six-hour round today. Tomorrow my son and his girlfriend take the New Jersey Bar (which I maintain must have questions about the Jersey Shore, Pineys, and the New Jersey Devil). Yes, my children have done things that are dangerous (most of which I probably don’t know about), and they have at times given me due cause for worry. But they are alive, in Brooklyn, and I think that they’ll get over the hurdles of finding jobs and places to live. They are alive. They drive me crazy. They are alive and functioning.
I also spent time this weekend thinking about Charlene Spierer, the mother of the missing 20-year-old from Indiana University, a woman I knew when the family lived nearby and our daughters were besties in elementary school. As the search for Lauren has passed out of the news cycle, Charlene and Robert remain in Bloomington, waiting for answers. All the volunteers and the press have noted their graciousness, a perfect word to describe their composure during this trying time, their generosity to the community, their earnest wish—belief, rather—that someone who knows something will step forward.
Charlene wrote an open letter on their blog (http://newsonlaurens.blogspot.com) six days ago describing what it is like to wake each morning hoping that today is the day they “find” her. 
How they in their hearts are defining “find” I cannot know. I can feel their pain, though, their anxiety. I think about how they “don’t know” and I get a headache, a heartache. I joke about a nightmare I had of being in the Apple Store and of the geniuses not being able to fix “it” (unspecified in the dream). It was a dream about my anxiety about my kids, though, and when I awoke, I felt I had a nightmare. Charlene, Robert, their lovely daughter Rebecca, their nieces Emily and Ariel, all the family, are in a living nightmare.
When she was 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, the years she was so close to Rebecca, my daughter used to say, “isn’t Charlene the nicest person you know?” Yes, the answer is yes.
Our kids do dangerous things. We worry. But some people have a lot more to worry about than others. Terrible things happen; some of them can be prevented, some of them can’t. Our job as parents is to be there for our kids, even when they’re adults. I called my son tonight and said, “It’s your cheerleader. I’m carrying pom-poms, making a pyramid. You go!” I called my daughter and said, “Wow. It’s over. What are you doing to celebrate?”
I plead with the parents of Lauren’s friends: Talk to your kids. Support them as they come forward and do the right thing. Think about Charlene’s nightmare. Your kids will be fine. They are alive.
The picture of Lauren is blurry because it was taken with a surveillance camera and is the last known image of her.
I know I always end with bullet points, but only two tonight:
- Even something small could be big. The telephone number for the Bloomington Police Department is 812-339-4477. “America’s Most Wanted” is also taking calls: 800-Crime-TV (800-274-6388). For more information, check the website http://findlauren.com.
- We are also facing a financial crisis in this country. Call your congress people. We live in a democracy; what we say counts. If you need your congress person’s telephone, check http://house.gov and http://senate.gov. You can also find many of them on Facebook—like their pages to leave comments. Or if you’re on Twitter, tweet at them.
As always, I love your comments, even ones from nuclear physicists. You can find me on Facebook at either www.facebook.com/Linda.Bernstein or www.facebook.com/LindaBernsteinPhD. My Twitter handle is @wordwhacker, and on Google+ I’m gplus.to/lindabernstein.
