No easy way out
My son called me on my way home today to get permission to go jogging, and then dropped a bombshell - a kid with whom he'd hung around for years killed himself today.This kid, Kiheem, hung around our house on & off, sometimes just about daily, for years. He'd slept over a few times. I'll never forget one occasion when he and another of Steven's friends, Glen, both spent the night, and we all decided to play hide & seek in the dark inside the house. At that time, I think I only had two kids, and the younger one, Sam, was fast asleep. So the boys & I turned out all the lights from the kitchen straight through the dining room to the sun room. Naturally I got to be "it" first. Somehow this game involved a lot of chasing around, once we'd all got our night vision. Kiheem paid me the ultimate compliment after several rounds, while we were catching our breath (literally & loudly, in my case). He said, "You're pretty fast. Not as fast as MY mom, but fast." I felt absurdly proud.
When we first met, he addressed me as "Miss Wendy". I was never comfortable with that, but he was extremely polite and well-brought-up, and it took me a while to convince him that just "Wendy" was plenty fine with me. Somehow, however, over the years, he loosened up to the point where I'd come home from work to find five or six neighborhood kids playing in my back yard. When I approached the group, he'd invariably come up to me, hug me around the waist and say, "Hi, mom".
Even though he & Steven seemed to have drifted apart over the years, he turned up a few times this past summer to play basketball with the group that gravitated to our house. I was always thrilled that he was comfortable enough to continue the "Mom" and hug tradition he'd started, although naturally I was low-key about it. Now I wish I'd hugged him harder, paid more attention, and spent more time with him.
Steven and I talk sometimes, about various subjects. We started doing it several years ago - we'd take walks, just the two of us, and talk about everything from religion, to history, to family. I know we've discussed suicide, and how it's never a solution, although to my mind the caveat has always been "unless you know you're going to die painfully otherwise anyway". This most recently came up during the anniversary of 9/11, in fact. I just hope he listened and agrees. Sometimes, you do want your kid's opinion to be your own.
Kiheem, I'm gonna miss you.
posted by PratchettFan @ 8:07 PM
1 comments
