It’s crazy to think that I’ve watched this boy go from diapers to grade school to being a full-grown man. I’ve been with him every single step of the way. I was there for every milestone, every smile, every tear. Not once did I leave his side.
And now, here I stand, watching him lie on this damn hospital bed, and I can do nothing to bring him back.
The beeping of the machines is the only sound filling the room, and it’s the harshest noise I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve taken on live gunfire and had explosives detonate in my face, and still, the chilling, steady beat of the monitor is the most terrifying sound to me.
His heart still beats. His chest rises and falls in a mechanical rhythm, as if he’s still here—but I know the truth. His body is hanging on by threads, and his soul is somewhere I can’t reach.
“Your son is brain dead.”
The words echo loudly in the deepest chambers of my heart.
I place my hand gently on his, feeling the coldness in his skin. He has numerous tubes and wires attached to him, trying to keep him anchored to the land of the living.
“Daniele,” I whisper, my voice cracking, “I’m so sorry, my boy. I failed you.”
I’ve never been one for prayer. Never needed to ask for guidance or strength. But right now, standing at the edge of my son’s life, I don’t know what else to do. So I close my eyes, the weight of everything pressing down on me, and I pray. For the first time in my life, I beg the heavens to give me just one more moment with him.
“Please,” I murmur. “Just one more conversation. Let me tell him I love him. Let me make things right. He needs to know that I love him—that I forgive him.”
I take my seat beside him and hold onto his hand for dear life. The tears prick at my eyes but never fall. I simply sit in the silence, the only background noise the steady beating of the monitor behind him.
“Come back to me, my boy. Even if it’s just for a moment. Come back to me.”
Never in my life have I felt so broken. The woman I love hates me. My son is between life and death. And all I can do is stand and watch the wreckage that follows.
I don’t know if my words will reach anyone. Heaven, fate—whatever it is that might hear me. But I say them anyway, desperate for any kind of intervention.
The minutes tick into hours, and the sun dips just below the concrete horizon. The streams of light that filter in are from the last remnants of the day.
Will I have to make the choice to take him off this machine? Would it be cruel to hold out hope for a miracle?
I have scorned heaven enough times for it to ignore my cries.
But still, I plead with them anyway—
Hoping.
Praying.
For a miracle for a sinner like me.
I blink my eyes open and look down at his face again, expecting to see his sleeping form—but I’m stunned. I see his lids twitch, the tube in his mouth shifting ever so slightly.
“Daniele…” I whisper his name. “Can you hear me?”
And then, it happens. The soft flutter of his eyelids.
I watch, breathless, as his eyes blink open. There’s a flicker of disorientation, but then they find me. His gaze is uncertain, slightly confused—but it’s there. He’s looking at me.
And for the first time, I see the apology in his eyes. He can’t speak, not with the tubes in his throat, but I hear him anyway. I feel the weight of what he’s trying to say—the regret, the understanding.
I feel it too.
Maria’s words hit me again, this time with far greater force now that I’m standing at his bedside.
“Daniele,” I say softly, my voice barely a whisper as I lean closer, still holding his hand. “I forgive you, my boy. Okay? I know you were just angry, confused, and lost. But I forgive you. I forgive you, and I am so, so sorry. I never wanted you to feel like you were unworthy of being my son, because that was the furthest thing from the truth. You may not be my blood, but you are my son. You’ve always belonged with me—DNA was never what made us family. You didn’t need my blood to be mine… You always were.”
The words hang in the air. A promise. A release. It’s all I can give him now. I am powerless to offer anything else.
A single tear slips from the corner of his eye, the light in his blue gaze locked on mine.
And then, just as quickly as the spark of life returned, it fades.
The monitors flatline.
The beeping morphs into a deafening silence.
His chest stills—and I know.
He’s gone.
“Daniele…” I whisper his name into the sterile room, the scream of the flatline echoing in the background—but I can’t even hear it anymore. “Go well, my boy.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, forcing back the grief that threatens to consume me.
My son—my precious son—is no longer here.
The words I should have said years ago.
The things I should have done.
They’re all left behind.
But at least I had that one moment.
The one confession I needed him to hear.
I stand there for a long while, staring down at him, willing my heart to accept what’s happened.
But it doesn’t. It never will.
A parent is never meant to bury their child.
It’s the kind of heaviness that refuses to leave you—even as the years drift on.
And I will carry this hurt for as long as I live.
And that’s okay.
Because the pain I carry will always be proof of the love I still hold for my boy.
Until the day we meet again—
Wherever that may be.
A week later…
The rain pelts down as I stand at the gravesite, the umbrella above me doing little to shield me from the weight of it all. I watch as my son’s coffin is lowered into the earth, the finality of it hitting me harder than I ever could’ve imagined. My chest aches—a raw, bleeding wound that won’t heal. I thought I could bear this. I thought I was prepared. But I wasn’t. No one ever is.
Maria stands beside me, her presence the only thing keeping me anchored. Her hand rests in mine, and she hasn’t let it go since we left the church service. True to her word, she has stayed by my side while I face the worst pain of my life. I’ve never needed to lean on a woman before her. But now, for the first time in my life, I allow myself to break. I allow myself to be weak—if only for a moment.
I glance to the side, my gaze landing on Beatrice’s tombstone—the grave next to Daniele’s. The two of them are together now, buried side by side. It seems fitting, in a way. They were always so intertwined in life, even if we never really acknowledged it.
“As his soul has left this earth, we lower his body to the ground, and I ask that…” The reverend begins his speech, but I’m too far gone to process his words.
The ceremony passes in a blur—the somber rituals, the weight in the air. I can hardly feel anything except the cold numbness creeping into my bones.
And then, when it’s finally over, we return to the manor for the wake. A place I haven’t set foot in since Beatrice’s passing.
It took Beatrice dying for me to leave this estate I had built for our family. And now, it’s taken my son’s death to bring me back.
The family home he grew up in and loved so dearly.
The house feels just as hollow as I do. Filled with mourners, yes—but also filled with ghosts. Still, there’s a strange comfort in being surrounded by these familiar walls.
