I Will Let You Go...Just don't leave

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears. Hard Times. Johnny Cash.

In messages to friends, he signed his name, Aaron...Good Times. When drugs entered his life in 2003, he wrote on his bookshelf: Good Times. Hard Times. Bad Times. Sad Times. I fought the drug culture that summer,  and the culture won....then.  We were losing Aaron and we would not let him go. Imagine fighting evil for the soul of your child. You can't see it, the drug culture is shrouded in darkness. Your fight is with the wind blowing from every direction. Who is the enemy? The friends? The school? The police? My son? Even me.

It's 11:09 AM ten years since that May 10th day in 2005. I recall the events of the morning too clearly.  At 9:40 AM the teacher at Horizon High School, enforcing the fatally flawed relapse policy, told Aaron that first hour was finished and it was time for him to leave the school grounds. Aaron was having fun with his peers...a peer support program works that way, together never alone.  Aaron I'm told replied, "But I'm not ready to leave."  No. My son was not ready to leave. He followed the agreement.  Aaron drove his black GMC Sonoma home.  At home he sat down with a whole coconut cream pie Cathy had made for his birthday. His phone was plugged into a charger. Aaron joined in on some world wide video game. (Video gaming in the daytime wasn't the agreement) He played until his phone range a few minutes after noon. A 19 year old friend who had done jail time for dealing Oxy asked for a ride to a job interview. His mother declined to do the job, his grandma was busy. The video game was paused. Aaron was coming back; he wasn't leaving.

One neighbor saw Aaron in our front yard at 12:09. Aaron was talking on his phone, walking, and smiling. Our next door neighbor saw him drive out..probably 12:12. Aaron drove 2.8 miles from home, traveling west on Vinburn Road. At 12:17, the owner of the concrete wall, holding mulch for sale, 20 feet from the road, said Aaron had a pulse. And then he was gone. For 2 hours we knew nothing of what was happening in that ditch. I even left a message on Aaron's phone around 1:00...he was healthy, happy, alive as far as I knew.

It's less than an hour until ten years ends and the eleventh begins. Aaron, I will let you go, just promise you won't leave. Oh hard times come again no more. Many days you have lingered...around my door. From middle school on Aaron kept a notebook of sayings he found interesting. I don't know if last words were included, but I know he'd love for his last words to his friends at school be recorded, remembered. Smiled about. "But I'm not ready to leave."