By Mike Van Meter
The Bulletin
The tears, the crying, the screaming -- that comes after everyone leaves.
Yet when people are there, Gary and Mimi Graves speak about what everyone else is afraid to speak about -- the long-running battle with mental illness that pushed their son, Ryan Patrick Graves, off the Crooked River Gorge Friday.
"His grades were good, he had friends, most people thought he was a neat kid. But for Ryan, the highs could never compensate for the lows," said Gary Graves.
Ryan, a 16-year-old junior at Mountain View High School, called both his mom and dad that afternoon, told them he loved them. Gary said "I knew in my heart" when Ryan called collect from a U S West pay phone that it was the last time he'd hear his son's voice. Ryan probably already had driven his green, oil-leaking 1972 Jeep Wagoneer to Ogden Scenic Wayside. Mimi said that Ryan, who had taken to wearing khaki slacks as a fashion statement, "was the only kid in the world who could look cool" driving such an uncool rig.
Gary and Mimi talked to Mountain View students until early Monday afternoon. They talked to family. They talked to friends. They talked over coffee in their home this morning at the same time Ryan would have been walking into his first-period U.S. history class.
The Graveses talk because they think it's important for others to understand something about their son's "parallel existence," the depression and attention deficit disorder that drove him to leave mom, dad and younger brother Kelly behind. At the same time, they don't want anyone to misunderstand their willingness to tell others. They especially don't want others -- especially teens -- to think there's any glory in what their son did.
"This is not to glorify Ryan," Gary said. "But we want people to understand he didn't have any control over his illness."
Gary spoke of Ryan's depression, of documented mental illness in his family, in Mimi's family, of the "DNA in me" that contributed to Friday's tragedy. As the morning sun warmed their home, Mimi told stories about Ryan's conflicting lives -- the smart student who looked forward to college, but who once told his mom that he "wanted to know if God was real so bad he was willing to die to find out."
As preparations for today's funeral Mass progressed, as family members went out to buy khakis to wear at the service, there were plenty of people to listen to what the Graveses said, plenty of people to lift them up.
"We always knew we had friends," Gary said. "It's just the extent of this that has been phenomenal."
The crowds, however, won't always be there. "The reality is, they're going to leave," Gary said.
So now, while they still have the chance, Gary and Mimi Graves are talking.