My son’s preschool teacher is amazing.  She put together a mother’s day party for us.  The kids made picture frames for photos she took of them.  They sang a song, we ate chocolate cupcakes, and my heart swelled with joy.

I didn’t celebrate my birthday on April 27 or at all this year.  Instead we went to the funeral of a close family friend.  Ryan was a 20 year-old boy that I had known his whole life.  His sister and I were good friends in our small private school.  When my parents divorced, our mothers became friends who helped each other out as much as possible with childcare arrangements, food, money, and company.  We were like a family with two moms, three girls and a little boy, born when I was eight.  We spent each birthday together, summers together, and many Saturday nights playing board games after sharing a meal.

My sister and I always cared for Ryan like a little brother.  We always wanted our mom to have a third child, preferably a boy, so Ryan was an easy target.  As she and I got older, we would take turns babysitting during the summer.  We would play video games together and make lunch.  He was so easygoing and fun to hang out with it was barely like “working”.

After our families drifted apart when we went to different high schools, my mother got remarried, and we moved out of the city limits, our families still got together every year for his birthday in October.  We all felt a need to give this little boy a great birthday because there were always so many things going against him.  An absent father, a single mother, very little money, trouble with school, etc.  My mom and step-dad tried to help as much as possible, keeping Ryan some weekends when his mom was out of town, taking him to school, eating lunch with him on taco salad days.

Last year we didn’t get together for Ryan’s birthday.  Instead there was a party for his one-year-old daughter.  That baby had been a shock to everyone, including Ryan’s 16-year-old girlfriend.   When that wore off, we were so impressed with the way he began providing for his burdgeoning family.  He worked two jobs so they could get an apartment and she wouldn’t have to work.  He seemed to really be getting things together after having a difficult time in high school.  Everything seemed to be going smoothly from the outside, but as young couples often do, Ryan and his girlfriend broke up.  Something he never really got over.

I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time with Ryan since I had gotten married and had a baby, but earlier this year my mom and his mom enlisted my help in trying to redirect him.  He and I talked and spent time together.  I couldn’t get over how much he had grown up in just a couple of years.  I talked to him like a peer.  We shared war stories about drugs and alcohol, parenting, and break-ups.  We were snarky like a brother and sister, trading barbs about our ages.

My mom and Ryan’s mom spoke on the phone April 20.  Mom told me about their conversation afterward.  So he was on my mind.  On April 22 I realised I hadn’t called Ryan in a few weeks and was going to do it that night but wound up going to dinner with my family instead.  I even thought to myself that I would call him the next night.

Three a.m. April 23 my mom rushed into my room and woke me up.  “Ryan killed himself.  We going over to his mom’s,” she said.

“What?” I said groggily, then grabbed mom’s arm, “What?! What happened?”  A thousand things go through your head when you’ve been woken from a deep sleep to the news of suicide. Things like “Surely, they found him in time.  He’s just in the hospital.” It’s not true, or there’s been a mistake.

But it was true.  It was a gun and he was very dead.  We lost Ryan, every age of him.  The baby boy, the smiling toddler, the child, the surly teenager, the hurting young adult. I ache for us losing him, for his sister, their family, but most of all his mother for losing her only son.  I am grieving as a mother of a little boy because I can relate to her anguish in a way I wouldn’t have five years ago.

The joy and wonder of motherhood is always tempered with worry and fear.  There are so many things that I won’t be able to protect my son from like heartache, depression, failure, embarrassment, and so much more.  A young suicide puts into sharp focus the overwhelming fear that I may not be able to protect my child from all of these things, most of all himself.

As I sat with my son at our special Mother’s Day party I watched him deliberately peel the wrapper off of his cupcake and take careful bites.  He is so precious and so small still.  The class sang “You Are My Sunshine,” but Owen walked over to me and very softly sang the song he knows best in my ear, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.  Afterward he put his arms around my neck, I picked him up, and he said, “I love you, Mommy.”

I cannot see far into his future, but I am so thankful for the tiny moments we share right now.