• If you had stuck around, you would have seen your son born.
    You would have been there to name him. I named him Samuel, after you.
    You would have been there when my father died, and been there to comfort me at the funeral.
    To help me through the hardships of being a seventeen-year-old mother.
    You would have been there when Samuel said his first word: “Ice cream.”
    To see him grow up.
    To see him win the talent show.
    To see him march in the Christmas parade.
    You would have been there to give him advice when he turned fifteen and began to worry about relationships.
    You would have been there when he came out of the closet to me.
    When he got his first boyfriend.
    When that boyfriend broke his heart and he wouldn’t come out of his room.
    If you had stuck around, you would have seen him become prom king, even though he didn’t even know he was a nominee.
    You would have been able to help him through the troubles of being eighteen, through the pressure to do drugs, to smoke and drink.
    To help him through the pressure of losing his virginity before he was twenty-one.
    To see him find his soul mate, Aaron.
    To congratulate him when Aaron proposed to him when they were twenty-four.
    To see him married when he was twenty-five.
    You would have been there when he and Aaron adopted a little Asian boy named Jun.
    You would have been there to comfort him when Aaron was diagnosed with lung cancer, at age thirty-nine.
    When Aaron died a year later, and Jun tried to kill himself.
    If you’d stuck around, you would have been there, at your adopted grandson’s graduation, when he was twenty.
    To be at his wedding, four years later.
    To be with Samuel, Jun, and his wife, Marcella, when I turned seventy and got kidney cancer.
    You would have been here right now, at my side, as I die.
    With your son, your grandson and his wife, and their two children.
    If you had stuck around, you would have been there for everything.
    If you had stuck around, I wouldn’t be writing this.