An interview on Substack

Here is an interview I had with Tools, Tears, and Treasures on Substack - https://open.substack.com/pub/estherstanwaywilliams/p/tears-tools-and-treasure-by-katie?r=1st26h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

It’s my pleasure to welcome Nicholas

Let me introduce you to Nicholas Riley James Rizzo - a kid so wanted we gave him all the names we love. He kicked and rolled around in the womb and kept going once he was here on earth.

Soccer was his official love language, but he also spoke trampoline and jumping off cliffs. He was the oldest in a crayon box of three.

We lost Nicholas in September of 2024; he was 25. He’d spent the last few years fighting an addiction to Xanax and opioids. The way he left isn’t unique or special; 80,000 others in the US lost their lives to overdose with him. That’s equivalent to one commercial jet going down every day.

They say genetics loads the gun and trauma pulls the trigger in addiction. I’d like to change the saying: genetics loaded the gun and doctors prescribing pills loaded the trigger. Although maybe that’s me wanting to blame someone specifically when we are all to blame. I wish I’d gotten him on methadone and taken him somewhere far from our normal life - to a perfect place, like Sweden - for at least two years.

TEARS…what has been the saddest, hardest and/or worst part of losing your son?

Saddest: Recently I was volunteering with a kid in foster care. She and I drove to see an exhibit at a butterfly pavilion. The ache that she had for her mom, and I (silently) had for my son, was so thick in the air I almost couldn’t breathe. When we got to the parking lot for the pavilion, the sweet kid looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, “Can we go back to the group home? I don’t want to pretend.”

Yeah, who wants to sit in a house full of butterflies without them?

Hardest: The whole thing is hardest; it’s awful. 0 stars, avoid at all costs, do not recommend.

Losing my sense of self was tough, uncomfortable at best. But these looming storm clouds of longing never go away. He was my person, and now he’s gone.

Worst: Here’s a list for right now:

● Nicholas wasn’t there at his brother’s graduation, and Nicholas promised, no matter what, that he’d be there.

● All of Nicholas’s friends are getting married and having babies. And it seems impossible that he is missing all this life.

● I can’t remember our last hug; his arms were so big, and he squeezed hard. I fit inside his hugs perfectly and now I can’t remember when I had the last one.

TOOLS…what have you found most helpful in navigating your tragedy?

Journaling and poems.

Nick Cave, musician, griever, and lifeguard to grievers said,

“I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.”

In an effort to call to my son and to will him alive, I write to him. Most mornings I write words that don’t follow grammar or structure. With a hot cup of coffee as my companion, I listen, try to remember, connect. Then I toss words onto the page; I call them poems. Sometimes a piece flakes off, and it feels Nicholas-sized.

Here’s a recent poem that felt like him for a moment:

Don’t fear change, fear absence

Sometimes grief
is a 
drippy 
faucet

I can’t remember the 
sound of your voice
only  the way you 
said things. 
“MOM!“ You’d bellow
as if everything
was
an emergency

Other times it’s a soft nest
I can cuddle up in, let the dog
turn his back to me and
rest

I pulled out your baby blanket,
the bottom row is still unraveled
your tiny, carrot like fingers, pulled 
until 
the whole thing
unwound

Other times it’s a haboob,
a wall of desert dust,
dried in an oven for
over a season,
a torrent pressing in. 

Your aunt sent me 
a collection of 
little green
army 
men
with a reminder
that your fingerprints
were still all over them,
when you were
practicing 
to be big. 

 -Katie Rizzo 

TREASURE…what have you, maybe unexpectedly, discovered that has brought you joy as you’ve walked this path?

I know what cicadas feel like, splitting their heads open and emerging from their old skin; there’s no gratitude for this loss.

Since Nicholas and our grief can’t carry themselves I have to toss them on each of my hips and lug them around. I’d prefer the real person.

My other two beautiful kids are turning into amazing adults. That’s brought me joy, but I think they’d be equally as shiny and sparkly if their brother was here.

Maybe terrible things don’t have to give us gifts. And there is really no purpose to the pain. I’m not grateful for the lessons inside.

And I know that there are no absolutes, so if there is a gift, it is that I understand the depth of my humanity. The hearts of so many mothers before me cradle me to sleep, and someday when I’m ready to stand, I’ll cradle the next mother.

Find Katie on Substack at Katie Rizzo. See the end of this post for information on her upcoming publications*

And finally, Katie’s question for me:

What do you do when you think about the word forever?

When my son first died, forever was probably the most painful word imaginable. Because I simply couldn’t bear the thought that he’d gone, forever, so I would never get to see him again. And that I would forever be in the deep pain that I was in, right then.

The two were inextricably linked, of course. That’s why I realised, pretty much straight away, that never having any connection to my son again was completely intolerable. And when I understood that finding a way back to some sense of his presence was the only way I was going to survive this.

Everything I have done in navigating my grief since then has been underpinned by my need to take the agony of forever away. I maintain daily connections back to my son, whether directly (through our ongoing conversations via Voice-notes) or in looking at the world now through his beautiful eyes, as well as by committing to spread kindness towards others who are going through difficulties…these are all part of the same piece: my son has not gone away. Now I actively celebrate my forever, because Dom and my enduring love for him will forever be what motivates me to embrace life, with him and in his name.

* Katie’s memoir, " The Trimesters of Griefwill be released on October 6th, 2026 and is available for pre order anywhere books are sold. None of Them Are You, a book of poems, will be out on November 1st. For more information go to www.katierizzo.com