Five months after his 18th birthday, my oldest son started talking a mile a minute. He couldn’t sleep. Things he said made no sense. Doctors diagnosed him with psychosis and hospitalised him against his will.

Eight months later, my silly, big-hearted boy experienced a second episode, forcing him to leave college. The meds doctors prescribed made him “feel like a Scooby-Doo zombie”. He quit taking them. Instead, he self-medicated with pot, which ended up making his condition worse.

My life got reduced to keeping things normal-ish for my younger kids and making sure my eldest recovered – or attempting to manage him when he didn’t.

Last summer, my son cycled through three psychiatric hospitals in three months. After signing himself out of the last one, he settled in Chicago’s Uptown neighbourhood, just south of the leafy, liberal town where my husband and I raised him.

In early November, troubling texts and social media posts signalled his continued deterioration. For the first time ever, my son made threats of harm against our family. Two days before Thanksgiving, he drove to Florida, where his dad and I live, claiming we owed him thousands of dollars. We disagreed. He stormed off and checked into a motel a mile away.

That night, we learned he’d charged a 9 mm pistol and 100 rounds of ammo to his credit card. He had to wait three days to pick them up.

I was vaguely aware of federal and state red flag laws and presumed these laws made my son ineligible to own a gun. Since he’d threatened his younger brother in a text a week earlier, I wanted to be certain this was the case. Fifteen minutes before closing, I called the outdoor store where my son purchased the weapon, but they wouldn’t release any information. They advised me to call the police. I hung up and called my local police department.

Florida law leaves people struggling with mental illnesses alone unless they pose an immediate threat of serious harm to themselves or others.

I’d originally spoken with police after my son threatened us. Since he lived 1,200 miles away, they hadn’t deemed his threats credible. Now that he was only a mile away and waiting to take possession of a gun, I figured officers would collect him and spirit him to a hospital. This would buy us 72 hours – the amount of time the state allots for doctors to determine if someone meets involuntary hospitalisation criteria. My son was so demonstrably ill, I felt certain doctors would keep him longer. Maybe we could even get him back into treatment.

The officer I talked to advised me to call back if my son showed up with a weapon.

I wanted to scream at him, but I knew I might need him later. Instead, I wished him a happy Thanksgiving.

Still concerned for the safety of two of my children, I dialled the state police. An operator took my name and number, but I didn’t hear back. I was up all night.

On Thanksgiving morning, I sent my son who’d been threatened by his brother to a relative’s house an hour away.........

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