My son is gone now, but I need to talk about him.

Don’t feel awkward, or change the subject, when I say something about him.

My eyes might start to water. Or tears of laughter might run down my cheeks when I tell about the time I called him from work and pretended I was a game show host.

“Nicky, I will give you $100 if you can tell me who was buried in Grant’s Tomb?”

He did what any other five-year-old would do: he asked his 11-year-old step-sister.

When I told him he was right, he was elated.

When I told him it was me, he asked: “So do I get the money, Mommy?”

That gullible blonde-haired boy grew into a teenager, and much later, and thankfully, into a man.

A man in boy’s clothing at times, but a man.

A tender-hearted man.

A reasonable man. Most of the time.

A hard-working son who returned home to help us get the newspaper out years ago.

He wasn’t the same teenager who I’d fired twice and who’d quit three times when we’d remodeled our offices.

When he came back to Hennessey he’d lost most of his hair, and had shaved his head, which was hard for me to get used to.

Nick caught on quick to our new computers, and soon we had a short-hand that came easy to both of us, until it didn’t. Then we’d both say, “I’m sorry.”

He grew up more than I’d ever expected when he became a father.

A loving father who made jokes, played games with her, combed her hair and made it into doggie ears, or a pony tail when it got longer. He also corrected her, was over-protective, and she was his Punkin’.

For years Nick and I went into side-splitting laughter in doctor’s offices or emergency rooms over anything, or nothing.

He’d sometimes take one of the hospital’s rubber gloves, blow it up and place it over his head so he looked like a rooster.

Nick was there each time I called when his father was in the ER or ICU, and Heaven help the nurse who tried to keep him out of my operating room when they told him I couldn’t breathe.

All too sudden, he was the one in the hospital.

Three surgeries in 10-days.

Countless procedures, tests at four different hospitals/ICUs during his 50th, 51st and 52nd birthdays.

My 6-2 son went from 240 lbs. to 145 lbs.in three years.

He was only home a month during that time.

We cried together twice.

He thought I didn’t cry after that because I didn’t understand he was dying. I told him I understood what doctors said, but I couldn’t give up hope.

And I didn’t want to cry in front of him.

The loss of a child is a raw emotion that can’t be described.

It’s not supposed to happen.

It’s not the natural order of life.

Recently a woman who lost her adult daughter six years ago said her friends, and even family, try to change the subject, or look away, when she talks about her daughter.

That’s a shame.

Parents who’ve lost a child don’t need you to feel sorry for them, but sometimes we need to talk about our children. It somehow makes them come alive again, if only for a few minutes in our memory.