I don't know

How does one deal the death of their 22-year-year old son? A call in the middle of the night from cops that a driver in another car had had a hissy fit and put a bullet through their child's head?

I damned well don't know.

I guess, as my friends did, you start by sitting in an ICU unit listening to the pings and watching the monitors, before finally coming to the realization that the only thing they're signaling is that the machines he's hooked up to are working just fine and dandy.

Your child, on the other hand, is gone and has been.

Next, I guess, you sign whatever paperwork is needed to allow the harvesting of any and all viable organs in his body for transplant to others.

His father called me Tuesday to tell me what had happened and ask me if I'd come to a Celebration of Life tonight, that he and his wife had chosen to have for their son instead of a funeral.

It was okay if I didn't, he said, 'cause he knew it's a helluva drive to start with but with the traffic and all the road construction . . . but if I did, please, (he kept saying) no cards, flowers, donations, memorials. Or fancy dress. It's casual attire.

I'm guessing 200 people were there tonight at a Moose Lodge. Family, friends of the family; his friends and coworkers.

Food, drinks, pool tables, video games and a juke box going non-stop.

The swapping of stories between young and old. Those who knew him his entire life, only as a child and those who knew him only as a young man before his life was cut so terribly short.

I doubt I could handle any of this the way they did.

I pray I never have to find out.