Television journalist Raphael James covers breaking news stories across the Lowcountry, but there was one story he did not want to discuss.
For years, James held secret his family’s struggle with mental disorders that sent his teenage son into fits of rage and stole his father’s memories.
When Grant James was born in 2006, doctors told his parents, Sarena and Raphael, the devastating news that autism might prevent their son from speaking. Three years later, Alzheimer’s began to slowly strip James’s father, the Rev. Leroy James of Augusta, Ga., of his independence and personality before he died near the end of 2022.
The double diagnosis was especially tough to accept when it seemed to the broadcaster that God ignored his urgent prayers to heal his father and Grant, his middle child and only son.
After five years of self-reflection, James is sharing his family’s story in a recently self-published book: I Don’t Want to Talk About It: A Journalist’s Essays on Autism, Dementia, Religion and God.
“How can I trust a God who says ‘he loves me,’ but allows these kinds of things to happen against my desperate cries for help?” James writes in one of the 29 essays titled: “God this is some BS!”
The elder James, the former pastor of the Friendly Church of God and Christ in Augusta, however, continued to trust God until the end.
The stigma of mental disorders and illnesses convinced Raphael James to speak out. These mental health problems “bring all the things we don’t want to talk about, especially [when it is] in our own family,” he told the Charleston City Paper. “This is my dad, the man you’ve known as pastor all these years. This is my son, the cute little kid. Nobody wants to know the rest of [the story]. We turn a blind eye to it, and it does not get any better.”
Father and son do-overs
James painfully watched his father slowly lose his mental acuity and ability to care for himself. The first sign emerged when his father began to tell a story then switched to retelling another he had told numerous times before. The younger James interrupted, saying he knew the story and could finish it for his father.
Now that death has silenced his father, “I’d love to hear him finish those stories,” James admitted. Maybe in the retelling of the stories, James speculates he might hear something he missed before, “knowing there will be a time I won’t get these stories at all.”
James wants to give the male role model to his son that he had in his father, the witty and charming parent who passed on life skills to him. Instead, at times James reacted angrily when his son spiraled into episodes of spitting, profanity-laced yelling and threatening behavior that required restraining him physically before calling police to their home.
“I went about being a father with a notion I gathered from society,” James revealed. “Your kids are supposed to sit upright and be perfect when you are out in public. If your kids aren’t doing that, then you are doing something wrong. I had to learn there are [autistic] diagnoses that exist, and the problems are real. I had to approach raising my son on the spectrum in a different way.”
A complex relationship
James said his son is proud of the book that shows the beauty of the teenager he has become and the complexities of their relationship.
James said when Grant’s behavior triggers him “he does not have to wonder if I love him. We can talk to one another and address what we have to address and move on. It is a beautiful thing.”
Grant James is scheduled to graduate this spring from Ashley Ridge High School, his proud father said.
Writing the book evolved into a spiritual journey as James reflected on his father’s final years. The book was finished, but then James said he had a conversation with God.
James said God told him: “ ‘Despite how you feel about me, you are still one of my favorite people.’ This is as close to a spiritual miracle as I have ever come. After writing that, I had a sense of peace.”
The book would not have existed, James said, if it were not for the encouragement of his wife, who was his college sweetheart. “Just write,” Sarena James told him. “If it’s meant to be … it will minister to you first.” James wrote that in the essay titled “Through Sarena’s Eyes.” She also took the photos that accompany some of the essays in the book, which is available on Amazon or at books.by/raphael-james.
Presenting a view into his personal life has been “a freeing and cathartic process,” James said.
While writing the book, James said he realized he possessed a guide to give others insights on how to deal with mental disorders so others might avoid his mistakes.
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