26

2018 PRESCRIPT: Happy Heavenly 26th Birthday, AJ. I would write you a new blog but I am too busy going to the plays and concerts you keep helping me get great tickets for.  We love you and miss you every day you are gone, so today isn’t any more special or different other than it’s one of the two happiest and best days in your mom and dad’s lives.   Take care AnJel and be heaven happy always as you were down here!

I’m not putting this on Facebook . Well it will end up there cause it’s the only place my internet writing can be shared. But that doesn’t matter cause it will still only be read by the few and fiercely loyal. I appreciate them and love them. Tomorrow AJ will turn 25. No, I cannot say would have. It doesn’t resonate nor feel right. There is something about this number. I can’t put my finger on it yet and hope I can by the last sentence.   Tears just keep flowing and so the words must as well. It should be over. That is the phrase that runs through my brain in a loop of not understanding. He is 25 now. He is no longer a child or an adolescent or a young adult. It is the age of male mental maturation. This I have been told by a few experts recently when so ready to pull my own hair out over the teenage/young adult angst and antics of my two sons ages 15 and 20. The magical number I am told. Just wait, boys brains are not fully matured until then. You will see such a difference. The magical male mental maturation age. Not fully understood by us females who are pretty done with our own mental maturation at 15 actually, give or take a year or two but no more.

And so it only feels right that his death should be ended as well. Time’s up. Time’s up for the pain and anguish his family and friends and I feel. Time’s up for the stoic and incredible strength and bravery and courage endured and displayed by his mother and father and sister. Time’s up. It should be.   Full blown adulthood begins. That should be enough to end it. But it can’t and it won’t and all the magical thinking in the world won’t change that. It doesn’t get better. It gets different. There are wounds that time will never heal. This is surely one of them.   I believe in the afterlife. I do. My computer geek of a boy has sent me a few signs along his journey in that afterlife. I believe it. I received one today. I won’t share it. Only with his mother. I believe he has reached his angel status in the afterlife now. Perhaps the equivalent of adult status in the here and now. It’s a nice thought and one I shall keep. That’s the beauty sometimes of things that require a leap of faith and not logic and facts. It comforts me to believe he is now a guardian. The two boys he grew up with need one more than ever right now. And so do I. Happy Angel Day, AJ!