Today is my son’s birthday. It hurts my heart to say that. It’s so easy to picture him here, to see him grinning and laughing. If he were here he would play with the dog, and the cat. He loved animals and was very good with them. He was great with computers and became a computer programmer. He wrote code. And he liked that. He loved Queen and sometimes I play many of their albums. Sometimes I can’t bear to listen to any. Bohemian Rhapsody can tear my heart out. Sometimes I have to listen to it so I can know something—I’m not sure what. But something pounded into me makes sense because you travel somewhere else with grief. He was beautiful.

“It’s funny the day you lose someone isn’t the worst. At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead.” —Steven Moffat

You just want to take everything back. You want another chance so you can do things right. And you say over and over again: I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You want him to know that, you want him to know, so bad. That you are sorry.

I used to get drunk and cry and drink and cry and drink and write and cry. I didn’t care about any life here, in this world. I wanted to die. That I didn’t was a surprise.

Squeek was his cat. He had gotten her just before he died. He knew he would die, he just didn’t know when, or that it would be that soon. It took a very long time until suddenly it was done.

Joel as Baby