The last time I saw my youngest son, Sam, he was wearing a ridiculous haircut. He was such a handsome fellow and it was the worst haircut ever, one that made him look goofy. Thank God I didn’t say anything about the hair. Maybe that’s why he smiled at me, because I didn’t say anything. That is my last clear image of him, giving me a happy mischievous smile, his face sunny for a moment.
He came by to drive me to the garage where I had left my truck. That was a good drive because we talked and it could be hard to get Sam to talk. I left him laughing with a story about moving a piano. Both boys had been by a couple of weeks before to help move the piano to have new carpet put down. It was a huffing, puffing experience for the three of us and Sam as always more than held up his end.
I got him to laugh because I told him about the two Mexican laborers, here to lay the carpet and who helped me move the piano back. Both were five six one forty and “they picked up that piano like it was a kitchen chair and I just had my fingers underneath the thing.” He laughed and I thanked him for the ride and closed the door to his black Camry. That was the last time I saw my son.
In the last two weeks of his life he remembered Mother’s Day and his Mother’s birthday. Only days ago Annie was driving home, thinking to herself, “When I get there I’ll ask Sam to put the air conditioner in the kitchen window.” When she arrived he had just finished doing that very thing.
On a Saturday morning in late June our beautiful son Sam chose to take his life. This has left me in such a state of shock I cannot say the words “my son is dead” without boiling into the hottest tears I have ever cried. “This is so unnecessary,” I keep telling him, “you didn’t have to do this, son.” But that handsome young man, so intelligent, so full of light once, who kept so much of his inner life unspoken, is gone.
I thank you for your thoughts and prayers.
1 July 2013
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