She holds me while I cry, her hand stroking my hair the way she used to when I was little and had nightmares.When my sobs finally subside, she pulls back to look at me.
“When people are drowning, sometimes they push away the very people trying to save them.So they don’t pull them under with them.He just needs a bit of time.”
Her words follow me as I leave the house later, needing to escape the suffocating weight of my own thoughts.There’s nowhere I can go that doesn’t remind me of either Sullivan boy, so I grab my bike and pedal aimlessly until I find myself at the park.
I claim an empty bench and watch a group of kids playing tag across the grass—three boys and a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old.They’re using the trees as bases, their imaginations turning the playground into some elaborate fantasy world only they can see.
One of the boys pretends to be a bird—or maybe even a dragon—chasing the others with his arms spread wide like wings.The little girl squeals with delight as she darts between the trees, her pigtails bouncing.
The tears come again, unexpected and fierce.
I remember being that age, remember the four of us—me, Jake, Nate, and Ollie—spending entire summer days in this same park.
So how did we end up here?
How did we go from that innocent happiness to this suffocating grief in what feels like the blink of an eye?
“Mind if I take a seat?”
I turn to find Alfie standing beside the bench, wearing his infamous paperboy hat that looks older than he is but somehow makes him more himself.His eyes are kind behind his glasses, and there’s something about his presence that immediately makes me feel less alone.
“Of course.”I say, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand.
He settles beside me with a small grunt, and for a while, we just sit in comfortable silence, watching the kids play.There’s something peaceful about being near him.
“You’re carrying a heavy load,” he says finally, his voice gentle but matter-of-fact.
I let out a shaky breath.
“I don’t know what to do, Alfie.I don’t know how to help anyone, including myself.”
“Sometimes the hardest thing to learn is that we can’t fix other people’s pain,” he says, adjusting his hat.“We can sit with them in it, we can offer our love, but we can’t take it away.”
“But I feel so helpless,” I admit.“Jake is gone, and Nate won’t let me be there for him, and I keep asking myself why does God take people like Jake so young?People who had so much to give, so much life left to live?Why does the universe seem to get a kick out of breaking the people who deserve it least?”
Alfie nods slowly.
“I’ve been asking that question for about seventy years now.Lost many brothers in Vietnam, my own when he was barely eleven.Brightest kid you ever met, had plans to be a teacher.For the longest time, I was angry at God, at the universe, at anyone who’d listen.”
“I used to think there was some grand plan, some reason behind the pain.But sitting here, watching these kids play with the same joy we once had, I can’t find any meaning in Jake’s death.”
He pauses, watching as one of the boys helps the little girl up after she’s fallen.
“You know what’s a hard truth to swallow?Sometimes we don’t want to heal or move forward because the pain is the last link to what we’ve lost.Holding onto that hurt feels like holding onto them.”
His words force me to look at him.
“So what are you supposed to do?”
“We learn to carry it differently,” he says simply.“The love doesn’t go away, it just changes shape.And sometimes, when we’re ready, we find ways to honor what we’ve lost by how we choose to live.”
I think about Jake, about his infectious laugh and his way of making everyone feel like they mattered.
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to handle any of this anymore.”
“Strength isn’t about not feeling the pain,” Alfie says.“It’s about feeling it and choosing to keep going anyway.That young man of yours, he’s learning that lesson the hard way right now.”
“And if he doesn’t want to dig himself out of the dark?”
