Joshua

Every moment of every day my heart cries out for him, my son! Joshua was my first born and my first real understanding of what it meant to be selfless. I was sixteen when I had him and yet it seem that bonding with a baby and caring for him were as natural to me as speaking. As he grew it became more and more apparent that he would not have the heart for this world. Not fit in, not understand the cruelty of those around him and certainly his fashion of deep love, strong commitment and taking the pain of others on, would not be welcomed or understood. He was simply to caring for this life. Looking back I did not help. I feel it was my heart and how close he and I were that made him so fragile. It might be possible that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but for me it is paved with regret. It is a dark place, a missed phone call on an evening when he was going to take his life or time not spent. These are all the trappings of the darkness.

On the evening of June 3rd Joshua hung himself at a home in Wolfboro NH  I was not the one to find him. I was not the one to call 911, I was not the one who had the chance to scramble and struggle to get him down, to make him breathe again, to go in the ambulance...I was in fact hours away at a home in Gloucester on the ground screaming and what seemed like a million miles from my son. The drive to Wolfboro was torture. A phrase kept running through my head "wither so ever thou goest"...I found out later that that is a Bible verse Joshua 1:9.

The hospital was full of crying people. I think I was in a numb shock and certainly not processing what was about to happen or what I would see. My family each went in to say there good-byes separately and then it was my turn. I know some families have chosen not to go in, some have decided it best not to let the last sight of your child be bruised and broken. That however was not me. I knew I had to, I knew it would be regretted always and I needed to say good-bye. If I could not make myself turn the knob and go in, then the only idea I had was to go in backwards. To get myself to his body, but not face this. I turned around, pushed against the door with my back and entered into a place that was so quiet, so eerie and so void of my sons energy. My face was now on the door as I backed into the room and reached my hands out behind me, waiting for the moment they reached where he lay. One step, another step and then another until my hands behind me felt a warm blanket and a foot. My baby boys foot. There I was suddenly holding death in my hands and waiting for him to say something. He did not. Finally after a time I turned around. There was my son, gone. His beautiful black hair, his tiny beard on his chin that he was trying to grow and the eyes that I wanted to look at me, closed. The blanket was pulled up high on his neck so I could not see the marks from the strangulation, but I am a mom and so I pulled the blanket down and ran my fingers over those lines and flashed to the attic and the struggle for breath and the reality of what he has just done.

So many knew my son. The outpouring of love from Wolfboro to Gloucester made his memorial service standing room....I never knew how many lives he touched until that day.