They say your life flashes before your eyes as you lay dying. I don’t know whether this is true, but I do know my son John’s life re-played in my mind while I sat waiting for the policeman to tell me he was dead.
John disappeared in the early morning of June 10, 2006 after calling our pastor and his ex-girlfriend and telling them he was going to kill himself. We filed a missing persons report and talked with all his friends and relatives trying to see where he might have gone. We assumed that, if he had killed himself, someone would have found the body, so he must be off “finding himself.” Although John had tried to kill himself before, he’d always done it in such a way that he was able to be “saved.” We hoped this meant he wasn’t really serious about it. We were wrong.
A year ago, July 17, 2006, about 1:15 pm, the police detective called and said he needed to “meet with me.” I told him how to get out to the farm, knowing almost for certain what he would tell me when he arrived.
During his 20 minute drive, my thoughts were filled with odd memories of John. I didn’t try and pretend the news would be good, though I also didn’t overreact and cry hysterically over something that wasn’t certain . . . yet.
I remembered in detail the day John was born and the joy his father (who died in 1981) had in his son. I remembered moving from Alaska to Missouri, his growing up in several different homes and farms in the Ozarks, good and bad memories flowing together. I remembered that his girlfriend was pregnant with his child, something he had long wished for.
And then the police arrived to tell me they had found John’s body.
There will be no more new memories of John, only the old ones remembered again and again.
