I will never forget the day when I was making dinner, and my 17-year-old son walked out. He had his backpack on his left shoulder and his suitcase in his right hand. He said he was moving out and was never going to come back, which was terrifying because he was obviously on drugs again, enraged, and it was hard to know if I would ever see him again. Alive. As a mother, the fear of losing a child is penetrating beyond words, and nothing could truly describe the heartache of knowing there is nothing I can do about it. I often find myself searching through my thoughts for him. I always see him in my arms as a baby, and he is belly-laughing at the sound of loose change bouncing on the table in front of us. It speaks to me how he delighted in the simple beauty of that moment. That memory takes me straight to the time he was eight years old at a family vacation at the beach noticing the merchants suffering in the heat. He decided to collect a cooler full of water bottles to run over to each of them as they passed by. I believe that my boy and his heart of kindness and joy still live on somewhere, and I cannot help but keep searching for him in hopes that he will return. That must be exactly the reason it is so excruciating to feel so far away from his little heart of love and joy. Only the earth could begin to hold the sorrow of that kind of loss and drink in the limitless tears. Only a mother could hold on to hope for her boy when all hope seems lost.