Replay

I replay the encounters. Constantly.

The last time I saw him was May 5, 2018. He came over to get his car serviced, hang out, and watch Avengers with me. He said it was my early birthday gift. Funny since I paid for it all. Before that, dinner at a nice restaurant in the spring. Before that, signing the car over to him, switching the insurance, getting his tags. Before that, Christmas at our house. Several days. All four of us. We had fun together.

I run through these moments in order. Then out of order. Then I look at the texts between them. Then I look at the texts I sent to friends asking them to pray for him. I have been doing this for almost eight years, and I cannot find what I am supposed to find.

Some people have asked outright how we did not know. Others ask if there were signs. Even the passive question carries an assumption that any decent parent would have seen what was coming.

The fall before he died, I was worried. He had gone silent for stretches. The communication was not right. I texted him every morning before I started work. I told him what I was studying in the Bible. I asked about his life. I asked friends to pray for him. I talked to my pastor about gathering a small group to go to his apartment. Not to confront him. To sit with him. To make sure he was alright.

Then he came home for Christmas. He laughed with us. He nerded out with his sister. He talked. He hugged us when he left.

In the spring I handed him a car title. We had dinner.

On May 5 we watched a movie and nerded out together for about eight hours.

He was back. Not partially back. Not pretending to be back. By every measure I had as his father, my son had returned to himself. If you had asked me in April how Caleb was doing, I would have told you he was doing well. I would have meant it. I would have been right, given everything I could see.

A few weeks later he was dead.

This is what the question cannot account for. The people who ask how I did not know assume the path runs in a straight line. A son gets worse and worse, his parents stand by doing nothing, and one day he is gone.

That is not what happened.

What happened is I noticed when something was wrong. I talked to him, calls and texts. I prayed. I sought counsel. I asked others to pray. I was ready to show up at his door. Then he came home for Christmas, and the months that followed were the kind of months a father is supposed to celebrate. They were good. They were the receipts I would have shown anyone who asked if my son was okay.

So when I replay the encounters, I am not finding a pattern I missed. I am finding a son who was here. And then was not.

The experts will tell you it is impossible to always know. They are correct. But I want to say it plainer.

Sometimes there is nothing to see, because what there was to see has already passed. Caleb had walked back into the life of a young adult doing young adult things, and I was watching with relief and gratitude. Not vigilance.

If you are a survivor reading this and someone has asked you how you did not know, you do not owe them an answer. The question is built on assumptions that are not true. You loved. You watched. You did what you could. The rest belongs to a darkness no parent or friend can fully see into.

I keep replaying. Not to find what I missed. Because it is the closest I can be to him now.