Two years ago tonight we held Liam and waited for him to die and this is the worst for me, existing through the day we bet against our son. It is the day we asked doctors to support us in letting him go. Or did doctors ask us to support them in letting him go? I can’t remember. The ventilator made an unsticking sound as they pulled it out, a machine that had entangled itself into the flesh of my child. His death began and the nurses lingered, clearing up the detritus of intervention as voices said is it that you love him not enough, or too much? and I shrieked at them GET OUT and they did.

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Another child teaches me to look for Liam in my backyard and I find him, or at least messages from him, and in the very same frame I see both a complete lack of divinity and an ocean of it.

Atheism is a compassionate day pass in its prescription of meaningless shit luck. Nobody let you down. You can’t stay mad at dust. Randomness causes a seed to fall into a bit of earth that happens to have an opening, and that seed either grows or does not grow thanks to a wealth or drought ordained by nothing but chance.

Damn dust.

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I don’t care what anyone says. Your functioning existence does not make you more worthy, or more tolerable, or more justified than him. Liam was not pure misfortune.

He was beautiful.

He was my son.

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Why does he stand so tall? Why is this one, out of thousands, so much more hungry given the same earth and the same sun and rain as the rest? This one stands with his hands on his hips, looking squarely at you. This one knows something you don’t.