I keep going over my son's life in my head, not on purpose, it seems it has a life of its own and every single moment is being spent remembering trying to make some sense of his death.

While I know everyone dies, no one is getting out alive; I wonder what I could have done differently to have changed the outcome. All the while knowing it is what it is and nothing I would have/should have/could have done would have changed the outcome.

My son has been in my head lately, a late night vision of him a grown man coming through a door with food and drink in his arms, New Year’s Eve where I swear I heard mom said, then last night his hand on my leg once I was in bed. I have always been that one that these things happen to, the night of his death, and while in the hotel, my bed being bumped softly repeatedly.

My son had problems, robbing a local small store late night after it was closed as a teenager for beer, of course he was caught and I took him to every court meeting making him pay them back, doing all I could to show him why it was wrong. The same with a pair of gloves he got caught stealing one Christmas for me he said, yep the guilt, but I still made him do as the court said and he paid them back too.

His first marriage ending yet she came to his funeral and hugged his finance telling her what a great man he was, how much she missed him and wish it had been different.

 I bailed him out twice the second time he chose to go to rehab and met his wonderful finance, I put a down payment on a car hoping he would choose a small one but not, my son always wanting better, always searching for the best and feeling he was owed it. Tires, tows, impounds, tickets and a trailer to live in for a few years all running up over $10,000 in credit card debt for me.

 He always meant to pay me back, he was paying on the card, he always meant, with all his heart, to pay me back, I know this.

Now one last need, to take in his dog Sammie, a puppy that someone dumped and he found and gave a home too. His finance can't keep her, not and move out of the country get closer to town to be safe and she did not have the heart to take her to the pound so was trying hard to find a no kill shelter but the list is long there, meanwhile whenever she left Sammie would eat the furniture. My youngest son and I went to pick her up last Friday and add her to our clan.I plan on getting her fixed next week and then we will see what happens.

She misses her daddy I can tell but she is starting to connect to me now and will probably end up staying.

One last need of help from mom and then no more, I don't know what I will do now, I wonder when I will stop flinching when the phone rings wondering if it will be my son or bad news about my son or God knows what, but those days are gone. I don't know what I will do now that he is gone, but wish he wasn't, wish I could bail him out yet again, laugh when he always called and instead of hello said I'm in jail, laughing right after.

 I have been trying to run from all this I recently realized, eating myself sick as if I obsess over food I won't have time to think about life and death, but that has to stop now.

 I can't run away from this so will turn and face it no matter the pain, the hurt.

I will follow through on my thoughts now, instead of stopping the thought from coming, about when I go to clean the yard I'll call Joey, or trim my tree I'll call Joey, go out for a drink I'd call Joey, or if I ever met a decent man I would have called my son and he would have been so happy for me, so many thoughts daily of plans we had for the future, his felony off his record, his school grant coming through so he could finish school all that hard work for what? Why do we fight so hard when we are just going to die?

My son was not a perfect child but he was my child with a good heart and I loved him.

 I miss him...

Miss Sammy