Mother, Son Reunited By Stroke Of Luck
Published: October 22, 2005
Will Magalis Jr. doesn’t go through life with anger in his heart or a chip on his shoulder. But if he did, who could blame him?
Drinking and drugs tore down his father, Will Sr., until sleeping pills ultimately laid the man to rest. That was 14 years ago. Will was 2 years old.
These days, if Will does cartwheels down the halls of Waterford High School, who could blame him?
He was recently returned to the custody of his mom, Eleanor Magalis Hempstead, who spent much of the last 14 years diving heart-deep into a roiling river of alcohol, pills, cocaine and crack cocaine.
She has been clean and sober for 83 days — 85 if she didn’t backslide between our Thursday night chat and her Saturday morning coffee. I trust she made it, though. She has a lot of reasons to live right. She wants to work her way out of The Covenant Shelter, where they are staying, and become self-sufficient. She wants to see her children and grandchildren. She wants to make a life for herself and for Will.
“I’m an emotional wreck, but Will makes it better,” she said. “Eighty-three days.”
Eleanor is 49 years old. She has five children (the others are 33, 32, 27, and 21 years old) and six grandchildren. She had five husbands, too. She battles bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder, among other maladies.
But she is doing the things that she and her son need to do to get better, do better and to have better.
You might well ask why they would spread such humbling — maybe even humiliating — cards on the table. I did.
First of all, it was a response to a question on an assignment in Will’s sophomore English class. He needed to write about an important experience of someone taking “personal responsibility.” He chose to tell his mother’s success story.
“At the age of 15, I have learned a very valuable lesson about the importance of taking personal responsibility for the things you do,” he wrote. “My mother was unable to stop taking drugs on her own. Her life was becoming out of control …
“In the summer of 2005 drugs had finally taken their toll and my mom had a stroke. She and I were very lucky she survived the stroke with no damaging effects. It took this event for her to realize that she needed to take action to get her life back under control. She knew she needed help to do it. She took the responsibility of finding the help she needed. … She knew she might die if she didn’t get the help and she wanted to live.”
Eleanor checked herself into Stonington Institute on Aug. 9, four days after her stroke. Her life has been uplifted ever since.
“That’s the first time I ever really did something good for myself,” she said. “I did that for me, because if I don’t take care of me, I can’t take care of him.”
There was another reason mother and son were willing to share the harsh realities of her struggles.
“I hope people see the damage drugs can do to people’s lives and make an effort to take responsibility for their own actions before serious damage is done,”Will wrote.
“I never expected him to write about it,” Eleanor said. “It came from his heart, and it hurt my heart to know how badly I hurt him.
“But now I feel so good, because he understands, and because he’s proud of me for what I am accomplishing. Eighty-three days.”
And counting.
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