It’s been a while since I’ve added a post to my blog. Life, with all of its ups and downs, dished out major difficulties in 2023, and one particular blow knocked me into a state of shock and immobility. I put my writing on pause during this time, but now I’m ready to open up and share that life-altering event.

It began one hot Texas afternoon on July 25:

I sat on the floor in my office to unwrap items my husband and I had bought on our recent hiking trip to Cloudcroft, New Mexico. We’d been back home in Texas for several days, and I’d waited until I’d finished washing and normalizing before I unpacked the goodies. I wanted to savor each item, and I was doing just that as I removed the tissue paper from a fur-covered leather handbag, a multicolor cut-glass lamp, two pairs of earrings and a bar of handmade vanilla and orange soap. I was indeed relishing the experience and I remember being so happy.

My cellphone was set on Do Not Disturb when the call came in at 2:34 that July afternoon, and I don’t remember why. But I wouldn’t have answered it anyway because the number was unknown to me. Since the phone was across the room on my desk and I was sitting on the floor, I wasn’t aware of the call. Twenty minutes later I saw the missed call and listened to the voicemail. An investigator from the medical examiner’s office was looking for family, friends or anyone that knew my son.

That moment. THAT moment.

I ran and told my husband, then we called her back.

My son had died a week earlier when we were in Cloudcroft.

The investigator said that the 911 call at 12:04 p.m. on Tuesday, the 18^th stated that he was lying on the hot curb of a food mart/gas station. He was unconscious and seizing. When the paramedics arrived, they determined that his body temperature was 108 and that his skin lacked any moisture. He later died at the hospital at 1:20 p.m. and an autopsy had been done. No identification was found on him, so he was identified through fingerprints. It took her—the investigator—a week to find me because of a phone number mix up. On a whim she transposed the numbers and did indeed get my number right.

At that moment it wasn’t so much his death that numbed and immobilized every facet of my being, but the horror of it all. For years I had braced myself for his passing, conjuring up thoughts of worst-case scenarios of what could happen. But his actual dying experience was unthinkable—I can’t even comprehend a body temperature of 108. The temperature was forecasted to be 109 degrees that day, and the investigator said it was between 101-103 during the time he was on the hot cement in the sun.

It was just too much to absorb in those few minutes, and the first thing I said to my husband after the call was, “It’s going to take me a long time to process this.” 

A few weeks later I obtained the hospital records, the autopsy/toxicology report and an audio of the 911 call. I learned that his death experience was worse than what I was originally told. He’d stopped breathing as the paramedics arrived, but they revived him. Then he’d gone into cardiac arrest as the ambulance arrived at the hospital at 12:44 p.m. Doctors worked diligently, but they couldn’t save him, and he died at 1:20 p.m.

He was 37 years old.

It had been a while since I’d spoken to him—14 months—and even longer since I’d seen him in person—17 years. My husband and I live in a rural area and my son mostly stayed in the downtown area of a large city about two hours away. He lived a homeless, turbulent life that revolved around drugs and addictions. Our multiple attempts to save him from his downward spiral throughout the years were unsuccessful. The thing is, you can’t save someone from themselves if they don’t want saving.

The last phone call from him was on May 7, 2022 around 10:00 in the morning. The reason I answered that call was because the number was from a social worker that had been trying to help him at the time. I was outside powerwalking around a quiet, rural cul-de-sac when my phone rang. The sky was a deep, bright blue with large, fluffy clouds. The sun twinkled brilliantly and the aroma of the crisp breeze was fresh and pure. The vast woods of cedar trees and rocky bluffs all around me were clean and bright from recent rains. It was a beautiful morning. I remember the exact spot in the back of the cul-de-sac where I sat down to chat with him. His mental state had deteriorated through the years, and that was always hard for me to deal with, but I mainly listened and spoke positively.

The only way I kept up with him was through online jail records. He had a history of mostly being arrested for criminal trespass, and the county jail posts inmates’ photos, so I checked the website daily. I still do, even though he’s gone.

He’d been dead for a little over a week when the funeral home picked him up from the medical examiner. The funeral director was kind enough to text a photo of him to me before he was cremated. I wanted to be sure it was him, even though his identity had been legally confirmed. I braced myself when she sent the photo, then opened it up. I couldn’t believe it. It had been a long while since I’d seen him so at peace. And the funeral director said she didn’t prep him—that’s just the way he was. After all that hell and then an autopsy, he looked relaxed and at peace.

We buried him at an old, serene cemetery on a bright sunny morning like that one when I had last talked to him. I put his vault of remains in the grave myself, my husband placed white lilies on top, then we covered it together. A yellow cemetery flag and metal pin marked his spot until we returned at a later time with his gravestone. I secured a yellow rose in the dirt from a gifted memorial spray.

So, while 2023 offered up some uniquely difficult experiences, this is the one that stymied me for some time. I haven’t gotten over it, and I never will. I am, though, moving through it in a forward motion. But I will never be the same.

Throughout the muck and mess of it all, though, my son never turned his back on his faith in the triune God—especially Jesus—and scriptures learned in his childhood remained with him. Every day I pray for God to have mercy on his soul for his steadfast faith.

The only dream I’ve ever had of him since he died was a fleeting vision of him standing and facing me, wearing a jacket from his youth and smiling at me. He was healthy and whole.

So maybe, just maybe, when I die someday, he’ll meet me wearing that jacket, smiling, totally healed and say, “Hi, Mom! Ya know, it’s been a while . . . “