St. George the Dragon Slayer

My son’s twenty-eighth birthday was the toughest of his birthdays. Birthdays, anniversaries are difficult for me. They remind me not only of the movement of time, but of all the beloveds I have lost.

Too often, I believed I had lost him.

There were moments when I thought not, when I was certain he was turning a true corner, and there were other moments when I could accept him in whatever state he was in. But on this birthday, with him fresh home from a ten-day stint on the mental health floor of a hospital two hours north, it was difficult for me to accept almost anything about him, except that he was here and somehow, for that moment, that was enough.

Our friend, Joan, a surrogate mother to me and a surrogate grandmother to my three children, presented him with a small parcel for his birthday. He opened the box and his eyes flashed with pleasure, relief, and even joy­, a rare emotion for him during those days. He pulled from the box a little ivory cross with a figure carved on it, a figure standing with his sword unsheathed, prepared for battle.

“Your father  gave it to me when he was ill, before he died,” Joan said, “and I thought you might like to have it.”

 “I have one too,” I said. “It’s St. George the Dragon Slayer,” and I rose to fetch my own.

His father and I purchased the crosses in Russia years earlier when we often traveled there.

My son and I cradled the crosses in our hands. For a moment, neither of us said a word. Then he spoke. “I’ll find a chain for it,” he announced. “I’ll wear it around my neck.”

When my late husband fell ill with a brain tumor, he believed he needed a warrior vision to “kill” the tumor, to return him—and us with him—to normality. So, he chose St. George the Dragon Slayer as his image. After he returned from the first harrowing week in the hospital which included a brain biopsy, yet before he began radiation, the children and I stopped in at the local pet store and brought home a fluffy white male kitten to serve as the antithesis to our little black female cat, Cordelia. We named him George, for St. George. The irony was, as time proved, nothing was warrior-like about George. He was playful and lovable and not particularly bright, and he grew into a rather lumbering, slow, round fellow who spent most of his time eating and reclining on his back, pink belly exposed. If this George had slain any dragon, it was the dragon of anxiety. It seemed our George never had a single worry.

St. George was actually a mere mortal, a Roman solder born between 275 – 285 and raised, during the early years of Christianity, as a Christian. He was a gallant and fearless soldier, but when he was ordered by the emperor to renounce his religious views and beliefs, he refused, and despite his prowess, was executed in 303.

Whimsically, the mythology of St. George tells us that in the kingdom lived a dragon who consistently terrorized the people, desiring a tasty human sacrifice whenever his tummy rumbled. The humans drew lots to determine who would be sacrificed to the pesky dragon, and one day the lot drawn was that of the princess. The people were horrified, as was George, who fueled by his strong sense of justice in response to evil, drew his sword against the dragon. The dragon, caught unaware by the force, strength, and relentlessness of his foe’s righteousness, was reduced to a sniveling reptile. His belly empty, his gaze cast down, the dragon, tied to a leash, was led through the streets of the kingdom by the princess, George riding along on his impressive steed. One can imagine the dragon subdued, pathetic, alone in his defeat. Later, George slew the dragon and the people were never bothered by the wretched beast again.

My son suffered deeply the month after his birthday. The day following his small, family party, we met for lunch and I noticed he already wore St. George around his neck.

“Listen to this song,” he said as he slipped a CD into the CD player in my car. “Can you hear the lyrics?”

I struggled to listen closely. Then he explained the singer, Joanna Newsome, was his age, conceived in 1981, as was he, and the song was about her conception. “Can you hear the part about St. George and the Dragon Slayer?” he asked.

We replayed the song and yes, there it was. “We broke our hearts in the war between St. George and the Dragon, but both in equal parts are welcome to come along…”

Each of us has dragons—small, large, threatening, annoying. The dragon may be the crocodile in the swamp, the illness in the body, the storm that destroys the house, the depression that darkens the soul. Perhaps we can consider the dragons our teachers, if not our friends. Would St. George ever have known the extent of his personal power if not for the dragon?

But what is a warrior? Is a warrior stern, rigid, murderous? Or is a warrior vigilant, vulnerable, receptive, if not fearless, then persistent? Can a warrior be compassionate?

The real St. George chose to sacrifice his life for his strong beliefs.

The mythical St. George, by his physical and mental power, humiliated and shamed the dragon, and eventually killed him.

I observed what happened with my son.

And I began to understand what happened to me.

After my husband died, my son turned away from us—me, his younger brother and sister— to allay his grief. He was sixteen years old. We were all, me included, too young, too fresh as a family, to suffer such loss. My son found solace in drugs. Yet my vision and hope for my child was fierce. I lived in denial and panic, then made interminable attempts to control his life, to fix him. “You can’t fix me, Mom,” he reminded me. Finally, I stopped. I let go. I didn’t let go of love. I didn’t let go of hope. I simply let go of him, of his decisions, his resolve.

Around the time of his birthday, my son suffered a series of overdoses and subsequent hospitalizations. Hence, the stint in the mental ward of a hospital. It was clear he needed to be, not there, but in a rehabilitation facility. After an intense and frantic search, we found a no-frills place where he could go for three hard months. We sent him there and so began that phase of his “battle.”

While he was in rehab, I occasionally spoke with his psychologist. One day, while I was visiting my daughter in Japan, far away and geographically unable to step in and “take back” my resolution of letting go, his psychologist wrote to me, “I saw your son today. He has decided that when he leaves here, he will begin using again. That’s what he wants.”

I spiraled. Over dinner, my daughter listened to me patiently, and when I at last paused, she said quietly, “You’re here. You’re not there. Forget him for now. Don’t think about him. Think about me, being here with me.”

My daughter had never ordered me to do anything. But she was right, and I obeyed.

And that was the last I heard of him returning to drug use.

This was what I understood, what I understand, and what my son learned. The dragon, regardless of what or who the dragon is, is not the crucial issue. The true issue is how we respond to the dragon.

This I learned from my husband when he was dying.

This my son learned from his father in watching him die.

It took years for the wisdom of it to coalesce.

Did the mythical St. George make the right decision in harming and eventually slaying the dragon?

He did save the princess as a result.

He destroyed evil, to salvage goodness and beauty.

But what of the dragon, before his death? Was he still evil? Was he ashamed? Regretful?

No doubt, he was terrified, knowing not only that he was overcome, but that he would soon perish.

What if St. George had chosen another tactic? What if he’d offered a truce to the dragon, or a suggestion to find a solution, to simply work it out?

Could St. George, or the princess, or the people have shown kindness, compassion to the dragon? To be compassionate, one must be willing to step into the pain of another, to attempt to understand the impetus of that pain. Why was the pesky, threatening dragon so ravenous, so thirsty for blood, so needy?

And why was the emperor so threatened by the beliefs of the actual St. George? Clearly, George was the emperor’s dragon.

But when the real George was executed, and the mythological dragon speared and killed, was that the end of them, of the dragons?

That question reflects the truth, the truth being: even if you destroy one, there is always another dragon somewhere.

From my perspective, my son’s dilemma was how he responded to the illness and death of his father. He was fourteen when his father fell ill, sixteen when his father died. He responded rebelliously, angrily, despairingly. He soothed himself with drugs. And so began his twelve-year arrangement with the dragon.

But at the end of that time, he chose another response, another arrangement and—slowly—his life changed.

And in observing him shift, change, and grow, and in my silent reaction to allow him to do so, so did I.