It’s four in the morning and cold in Montague, Massachusetts. I cannot sleep. My shaking fingers dial the cell phone. The city jail in Virginia. I dial this number too much.  The officers who answer sometime take pity and indicate, even if in code, that my son is alright. They think me mad, I know. They are not too far from being accurate. Parents of addicts who haven’t gone dead in the emotion department, those who haven’t shut down just yet, are a bit insane. It’s part of the gig. It was late and in the little “space of hell”, the no signal zone rounding the corner in Montague Center, I lost service.  I lost connection just as my son, in a room full of men, social rejects locked behind bars with him, was crying to me. “Mama, I don’t think I can make it much longer”, and “Mama, I seem to be going the other way.” As “Mama”, I know that means he’s losing it. As Mama, I’m the last woman standing. I’m his only cheerleader. I tell him he can make it, even when I’m unsure. Eli is my son. To the world, Eli is just a drug addict. The call was dropped at a most crucial time. I was smack in the middle of a pep talk when I heard the fucking beep that indicated that I had lost signal. I was disconnected from him again. I waited for the phone to ring again. It didn’t. Now in the wee hours of my 56th birthday, the first day of spring, I can only think of Eli. Did he think in my exhaustion and fear, I’d hung up on him? I have before. When I can’t give one more ounce of strength to him because I have none left myself, I disconnect and then damn myself for it. I damn myself for so much. Eli. All I can do is pray he knows and that the phone will ring when the sun finally shows up. I have to be there. These are the early morning ramblings of a mother lost in life, lost in space…lost in LOST…in time you may understand if you care to…it doesn’t, it can’t, make sense now. This is just the first of a thousand letters to my son…