“Come here”,” he said. I wasn’t really wanting to make a fuss or wake either one of us up anymore than I already was. I’d woken up and first thing I did was look at the clock. 12:30. Immediately I was hit with the agony of there still being 1 1/2 hours of after prom left. Why they make us do this or why they put us through this…no one has ever asked me to be on an after prom committee and this is my third time having a junior student in this school. Not that I would actually want to be on one.

He was out on the couch so he could wait up for our son. He scooted back to make room for me. I finally gave in and went over there after standing lost in the living room, not knowing if I wanted a drink or someone to hear me or if I would even be able to go back to sleep knowing he was out there somewhere, with the bounce houses and basketball tournaments and whatever else they were supposed to be doing less than fifteen minutes away at the rented venue called The Gym.

“What would you say to your clients if they were you?” I’d already been thinking about that and chapter 5 in the book Codependent No More titled “Detachment”. Obviously I was letting my psychological and emotional state be way too determined by something that was completely out of my control, namely, the physical safety of another person who I was no longer responsible for watching over in the same way. I didn’t say that. “I’m having this flashback to some school event back in Hoyleton.”

I was standing with Karis in the hallway between the locker rooms and the cafeteria. We were there volunteering for a school function, without our babies. But it had been a couple of hours, and that had been long enough. Our bodies felt the separation. “Don’t you think this is the way God meant it to be?”, she asked. I knew exactly what she meant. She was talking about the need to be with them and the desire to not be away from them for too long. I said all of this instead of the chapter thing.

And the tears and the sniffles came. They’re coming now again as I’m typing this out. I reached out my hand and pet the cat who was sleeping on the ottoman next to me. The words of another son’s poem came to mind, “Oreo, I love him so” before we knew Oreo wasn’t a boy. I don’t remember how long I laid there. By the time I went back to bed I think the clock said at least 1:08AM and I felt that at least felt more endurable, like I could go back to sleep now. I barely, just barely, heard him come in.