On Death Day:

Today is Shining Son’s death day. I’ll go to the cemetery but it is not like my other pleasure trips. I’ll put new flowers on his grave. He is in a memorial park type of cemetery. He has a plaque with a vase in it. I was unable to give him the headstone I wanted to but what he has is nice just the same. It has a dragon and some woods on it. Things he liked.

Once upon a time Shining Son helped the homeless teens in the city where he lived. He helped them get back into school or tried to patch things up between them and their families when possible. Or got them into treatment facilities. I hope that someone else has taken his place.

I miss him still a lot. He was the child I had more in common with. We liked sci-fi TV and fantasy books, music, colonial re-enacting and had similar personalities. He lived closer to me then Princess Daughter. We had local connections. We talked on the phone every day.

He was funny and a geek, tall and teddy bearish, smart and wrote poetry. He wore glasses, patchouli, tie dye T-shirts and size 14 shoes. He had long hair in a pony tail down his back, a beard and mustache. His smile came easy but so did the tears.

On a hot July day some of his friends with a small car invited him to go swimming after work. On the way home they bought some ice-cream and shortly after getting back on the highway were hit head on by a van.

He was not the only one to die in that car, only the driver who had an air bag lived. In the back seat he still had his seat belt on but his scull was fractured to liquefy. He was dead. It took them hours to clear up the wreck and get around to notifying us. I couldn’t even donate his organs, it had been too long.

I didn’t think I would make it through the first day without him. I did get to say goodbye of sorts. The morning of the accident I was talking to him on the phone while he was at work. Before we hung up he told me “I Love You Mom. I Really love you.” I said, “I know that. I love you too.” He said, “No, You really need to know how much I love you.” By this time his friends in the break room were on the floor hooting and laughing at him saying I love you to his mommy. I could hear them in the background.

Up to that day he always would just say ‘ditto’ or ‘same here‘ after I said I love you to him when his friend were around. I thought about talking to him about going back to our original way of doing things when we talked later in the day. We never got a chance to talk again.

I Love You Shining Son. I hope to see you again someday. Until then I know that you are helping others wherever you are.