Coffee doesn't taste so good today.  I'm not sure how to write today, I guess just from my heart.  Yesterday, a friend of my son's died from an overdose.  Just last summer another one had succumbed to drugs as well.  I think of these boys in younger days--running around and riding skateboards--fresh faced, awkward, and shorter than me.  How fast they had grown taller than me into young men--not even twenty yet.  Why did they get hooked on drugs?  One I could see, with his family broken, but the other had everything, a perfect family, so it did seem.


I hugged my son as he cried into my shoulder, thankful for how close we are.  I'm proud of the man he's become and how sensitive he is.  He said when his friend started doing heroine that he had distanced himself from him, but he had just seen him last Saturday and the boy had said he was staying away from the stuff.  I think he felt guilty for it.  My eighteen year old, with so much sorrow laden on his shoulders, straightened himself and told me he was going to go see his friend's family and friends, and then he was going to his class because he had a final.  I squeezed him once more and let him go.


There comes a time when a mother has to let her child go--into the scary dark world--each second spent worrying if he will stay safe and make the right choices.  We have done our jobs, provided a nest and the wings for our dear ones to fly away.  May they soar to heights that we could not and may they make the world a better place.  I send a prayer out to all the mothers whose nests are empty that their children are safe, and a special one for those mothers who have lost a child, may God's love fill your empty nests with peace and love.