How do you deal with a pain that won’t quit,
One that no matter how hard you try,
You still don’t know how to deal with it.
When you have to constantly look at an empty chair,
The one that held your son, who is no longer there.
My son usually got home every day at a quarter to four,
But not after this day, he would return no more.
I called the school my son went to, “Was he being kept after school?”
“Had he done something wrong, had he broken a rule?”
Well, the school didn’t seem to have any answers for me,
Not any they wanted to share with me, that was plain to see.
I went out looking to see if I could find him,
With each moment that passed my hopes grew more dim.
Where was he, he wasn’t at the corner store,
I raced home, hoping to see him when I went through the door.
I waited and waited and I was looking out the front window,
Then I saw this light blue car drive by real slow.
I started screaming and crying because inside my heart I knew,
They were coming to see me and my panic grew.
I sat down on the couch trying to calm down,
But there was no peace this day for me to be found.
The front door opened real wide and a priest walked in,
I knew right away but I still looked up at him.
I said begging, “No, Father, please don’t let it be.”
He said, “Yes, my child, I am so sorry.”
I tried to get up, somehow I had to get away,
But when I did the room began to sway.
By now the dreadful news it was all over the TV,
My pain there, the loss of my child, for the whole world to see.
You know sometimes when something does not seem quite real,
And you don’t know exactly how you are suppose to feel.
Everything around you is put into slow motion,
How are you suppose to deal with all of this emotion.
God spared me of seeing all of this played out on TV
The message on every news broadcast very plain for all to see.
In the morning paper there in great big bold type,
“A Child And A Train”, was what it said,
What the words read to me was, my child was dead.
Just ten days before this I had woke up in a terrible sweat,
From a really bad nightmare one I wanted to forget.
It was this very scene here being completely played out,
Of me calling my Dad and to tell him what my call was about.
All the days that followed I don’t know how I made it through,
I had no idea what I was suppose to do.
I kept waiting and hoping my Dad or someone would say,
“Wake up, are you going to sleep all day?”
The advice that just might help you make it through,
If this is something you must face too.
When anyone you love starts to go out the front door,
Grab yourself a hug or a kiss, you may never see them anymore.


© Brenda Sparkman
February 2004