My son, Daniel, died when he was nine years old.
He was playing with a ball near the school gate, and then a car turned too fast off the side street, and that was it. One moment he existed in the world, and the next he didn’t.
The grief of losing a child never goes away. It’s a wound that scabs and leaves a scar in your heart that you feel forever.
When I saw a young man who looked exactly like my boy, it felt like that wound tore open all over again.
The grief of losing a child never goes away.
For years after Daniel died, I still turned my head when I heard boys laughing down the street.
I still expected, for half a second, to hear a ball bouncing in the driveway.
I was advised to have more kids. “It will help ease the pain a little,” I was told, but I didn’t have the heart for it.
So, Carl and I turned into quiet people in a quiet house, and mostly that was okay.
Then the moving truck showed up next door.
Carl and I turned into quiet people in a quiet house.
Carl watched the truck pull into the driveway from the front window, arms folded, and said, “Looks like we’ve got neighbors again.”
I nodded from the kitchen doorway.
“I’ll bake something to welcome them to the neighborhood,” I said.
It was more habit than enthusiasm.
That afternoon, I made an apple pie. I waited until it had cooled just enough not to burn someone, and then I carried it across the lawn with both hands.
“Looks like we’ve got neighbors again.”
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