Right now I want the world to stop. I want to go back and do something different because in some messed up way, I think that maybe if I did something differently, that maybe something else could be different. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way, no matter how badly we want it to.
A kid that I love is gone. I should say another kid. Another funeral is being planned for someone lost way too young. As broken up as I am, I cannot imagine his poor mother. Sure, he called me mom, he practically lived in my house, but his mom. Jesus! I don’t even know what to say. There are no words for her. No matter how much we all collectively loved him, she is still the one planning his funeral. She is burying her child. No mother should ever have to do that. Ever. Yet, here we are. Again.
And what about the kids that will be going to another funeral for someone they loved. I say kids, but they are all adults now, even if at 51 I still look at them as babies with whole futures in front of them, well some of them. Another is gone. The future that was in front of him has been stripped. Stripped. He was robbed. We were robbed.
How do you recover from something like this? How do I tell my children, who have been to way too many funerals for people their age, that life goes on, that the future is limitless? How do I tell them that when it has had limits for so many people that they went to high school with, graduated with, loved, considered family? How do you ever recover from that? How do I tell them that they will recover? When I’m not sure how I will.
I got the news and went through pictures and wished I had more. I wished it hadn’t been so long. I wished I had picked him up the last time we were going to breakfast. I hadn’t because the time was so short. Little did I know how short it actually was. Realistically I know that not picking him up didn’t seal his fate, but had I picked him up I would be remembering a hug that was more recent. Him calling me, “Mom,” would have been fresher. But I didn’t because, well, life got in the way. And now I would give anything to go back.
I want the world to stop, but it won’t. I want to go back, but I can’t. All I can do is try to figure out a way to honor him, to be there for my kids, for the rest of the kids that I love who aren’t mine, even if they feel like they are. I can stop and feel my emotions, all 8 hundred million of them, even the ones that hurt like hell. And I can remember this young man being in my home and how much we loved him and how he was a part of my family. Even if he is gone too soon!
Kristen Ferrari 