Down the street from me lives a lady. I see her often, sitting on her front porch, when I’m going by on my paper route. Occasionally I stop to talk to her – she has a grandmotherly attachment to Alex, my son. In the summer she gives him popsicles.  She never fails to ask me how he is if he’s not with me.

In early January she lost her husband quite suddenly. She has family, two daughters who live with their own families not too far away, who were very supportive, taking her where she needed to go since the driver in the household passed away. When I talked to her about the passing of her husband she seemed to have made peace with the idea that he was in a better place. He left her to live alone with her disabled son.

Today, when I came to her house I stopped to talk and she asked me, ‘Did you hear?’

‘Hear what?’ I asked.

‘My son passed away last week…’ she told me.

Tears came to my eyes before I could stop them, causing hers to flow as well.

Her son was an adult. He had been sick for the past two weeks and was unable to fight it off.  His heart gave out. He was born with a heart defect much like my Alex was.

No parent should outlive their child. I’ve said this again and again and yet, it happens.  How can life go on after that?

How?