Kevin’s Two Memorials

Our twenty-nine-year-old son died suddenly after taking an illegal drug. He was our only child. Before my husband and I were able to see him, the authorities took possession of his body for autopsy. We saw Kevin two days later. Another two months passed before we were permitted to retrieve his belongings, which the police had ransacked.

Through all of this, we had no god in our lives to help us cope with the horror of losing our son. But, somehow, we arranged a beautiful memorial service that was attended by more than two hundred people, most of them Kevin’s friends who came from all over the country to remember him. The following August, we attended Burning Man, an annual counterculture arts festival in Nevada, and scattered some of our son’s ashes in the Black Rock Desert in the company of people who loved him.

But I get ahead of myself.

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