the lost boy

I thought I'd be OK today. Never really gave it a thought. Then I had to sign and date a prescription and there it was: 27th January: my dead son's birthday. He would have been 23. Where would he be now? I wondered. Travelling perhaps; he loved that, or living in America, his favourite country. But where is he now? Returned to the Universe, I suppose, from whence he came. Funny thing: I still wonder where he is sometimes, even think I see him in the street. You'd think the denial component of grief would have faded by now, but it doesn't work that way.

I look over to a picture of him hanging on the wall. Taken in a water-park in Tenerife when he was about 8, he's looking close to tears because he was enjoying himself so much, he didn't want to go home, which we were due to do the following day. A doctor signs dozens of prescriptions every day, and on each one, there is the date to remind me, as if I needed any.