12/15/2013

     And make no mistake, it has been a horrible journey. Anyone who says otherwise is either still in the midst of major denial issues, is mentally ill or lying. There are positive ways to try to deal with such a horrendous loss just as there are negative ways, but it must be dealt with one way or another. We did the best we could at the time to deal with each aspect as it arose. Sometimes our efforts were successful, other times less so. Now, almost thirteen years after our loss, we are survivors. Did we always do everything right? No. Did we sometimes veer offtrack? Yes. Are there things we could or should have done differently? Of course. Are we always 100 percent well now? Absolutely not. But we have survived and are continuing to do so, some days more successfully than others. The basketball tournament that is held annually in our son's memory at his middle school has grown bigger and better every year. The tournament enables us to continue to award a scholarship in his name every year at his high school. We still are in contact with many of his friends, classmates and teammates and are constantly amazed at what a positive and enduring impact Curtis has had on the lives of so many people in his short 14 years of life. But with all the positives we've found to hold on to through the years, the fact remains that they only exist because we lost our son. And we lost our son due to the negligence of one unthinking, uncaring person at one very horrible moment in time. We never got to see our son graduate from high school or college, never got to see him marry the woman of his dreams and raise his own family, never got to spoil his children as grandparents, never got to finish raising him and share his grown-up life. The children of our surviving son and daughter will never have the joy of getting to know their Uncle Curtis and what an amazing person he truly was.  Every time there's a family gathering there's always someone missing-and he will always be missing, at least in a physical sense. All those things, and so much more, were stolen from us on that terrible night. Over these many years I've made a kind of peace with it all. I had to, but it hasn't been easy. I wish with all my heart that it was a journey I never had to go on, but I'm grateful to be where I am now.