The weekend that never happened

I'm so excited to be traveling to the Purdue campus and West Lafayette this weekend, Parent's weekend. I'm the parent for a young man about campus that I could not be prouder of and could not love more, or so I think. In his first semester, he is adjusting responsibly to his class requirements and it shows in his GPA. My son, Nick, has made it onto the Purdue Men's Club Basketball team, last year's Club National Champions. He has found his peeps. He is going to have a guest performance back home during the holiday season, locally, in "The Nutcracker", with his high school sweetheart. And he seemingly is doing these in an "it's a day" moment. Enjoying his life. I love him. I couldn't love him more. I wanted this for his brother, Sam, too, originally his year older brother who died instead from unexpectedly in his curiosity, taking what he thought was LSD but instead was an hallucinogen designer drug, N-Bomb. It was three years ago at the age of 16 that Sammy left us.

In 2014, I never thought I'd get to seeing Nick in college as I didn't think I would be "here." Instead, I am seeing Nick excel at college, at Purdue, his dream, and experiencing his early engineering studies. Not defined by his brother, Sam, now gone, Nick is loved by so many and lifted up in blessings, yet so realistically still a young man of 18. Where life goes, no one truly knows. Who we become, never who we imagined we would be. Pushed beyond our original measures, enduring what we never knew life provided, we become what we never knew before. In the midst of love, is my hope. #muchlovetosam