Goodbye My Precious Son

This is the post I never wanted to write. I can't believe we lost this war. We will never see our boy walk through the door or his beautiful smile. We won't hear his voice. He won't be there to add the final touch to a building family joke. He will never cook with his dad, brothers, or little sister. He won't bullshit with his uncles or discuss life with his cousins.

He won't be here for Thanksgiving next week or for Christmas next month. He won't cheer in 2023. We will celebrate his birthday and all of ours without him. We can't treat him to delicious food again. We will never buy him another outfit or bag of socks or underwear. No more future plans. No more dreams. No more maybes. The only thing we have left is memories.

He will never call us to pick him up from random places. We will never have another chance to rescue him or send him to rehab. He will never have another job. He will never browse the internet. He won't explore any more ideas.

He won't attend another wedding or funeral. He won't get married or have babies. He won't see his younger brother or sister get married or meet any of his siblings' future children. He won't join us on a family vacation or random get togethers. He always wanted to protect his sister, now he can't.

He will never get his driver's license or an advanced education. He won't fulfill another dream or passion. He won't create any more music. He will never see another movie or witness a world event. He won't take a shower or brush his teeth. His body will soon be ash. Everything that affects us no longer affects him.

He will also never feel pain again. He will never feel shame. He will never again misunderstand how dearly he is loved or how much he is missed. He will never again feel that he is not enough. He will never again feel like he can't recover from his demons. He will never again feel his heartache of letting his siblings down. It was a burden he carried alone, they accepted him exactly as he was and only wanted him to live. He will no longer have to grieve the great losses he has had. He will never again feel the stress of filling like he didn't fit in.

We never again have to live knowing the incredible pain our son lives in. We no longer have to worry about the phone call we have been dreading for 5 years. We won't have any more futile discussions that made him frustrated. We don't have to live with the fact that he had no intention of being sober and said he didn't care if he died. We don't have to worry that he will become a victim of violence or lead a life of crime. We don't have to worry that he will hurt himself or others in his paranoia. We don't have to worry that we will be the ones to find him dead or that he will die in our homes.

We so desperately wanted to save our son but it's simply impossible to save someone who is not interested. It is an impossible burden with no escape. Every day, we will wake up and know he is gone. We will have to eventually clean his room and go through his belongings. We will touch the papers he has written on and the clothes he has worn. We will need to make a decisions. We will need to choose keepsakes. We will need to separate the practical from the impractical. We will laugh with some of the findings and we find and cry with others.

This new normal is my and my family's worst nightmare. Does the knowledge that this could happen at anytime help this pain? No, it doesn't.

I want the life, I want the hope.