"Family isn't always blood. It's the people in your life who want you in theirs.
The ones you accept for who they are. The ones you would do anything to see smile,
and who you love no matter what"
Unknown
One day when Emily was sixteen years old she brought a friend home for dinner. I was setting the table when in walked a semi awkward teenage boy with green eyes and a charming smile. This is my friend, Cory. She said. After dinner Bill drove him home and I asked if he liked her, was he her boyfriend. No, mom! We are just friends. I few days later Emily pulls me aside and says, mom, remember when you asked me if Cory liked me? Well he does and I like him. Just like that in that very instant Cory became a member of our family. He became a permanent fixture on our sofa, at our dinner table and eventually on vacations and holidays. We all fell in love with him. He made us laugh, He was wonderful with Sophie, He helped around the house and sometimes he made us cry.
They were kids, I expected them to date for a year or so but this was a deep and lasting love and the longer Emily and Cory were together the more Bill and I became to regard him as another one of our children.
He had suffered loss in his short life and would often come to me for 'mommy advice'. He and Emily were my 'Frog and Toad' as I called them. I picked him up after he was fired from a job, I made him soup when he was sick and we told him we believed in him.
Before we knew it Cory was at every family birthday, all the holidays and came on vacation with us several times. Bill would walk out to the pool in Palm Springs and come back to the room saying, When did Cory get here?
One year in Palm Springs my mom had this idea to buy a Panini Press. Now my mom gets the name of everything mixed up and soon there were shouts of, who wants a Ka-ba-she?!?
Cory and my mom began making sandwiches for everyone, Ham and Cheese, Turkey and Swiss, Three Cheese. Day after day Ka-ba-she's were flying out of the kitchen until one of the last days when there was no more bread, or lunch meat....Then Cory started making Ka-ba-shes from bagels filled with guacamole and hot dogs, not good. It was on this same trip that we learned a little tid bit about our boy, he was terrified of cotton balls. He tried to convince us that he wasn't scared but actually allergic to cotton balls touching his skin. That was all Emily had to hear she was off and running chasing him all over with cotton balls as he yelled and screamed. My mom, sister, Cory and Emily were laughing hysterically and decided to call me into the room stating that there was an emergency. I walked in to find the three of them laughing at Cory crouching in the corner to get away from the cotton ball. I asked what was going on and Cory says, I am allergic to cotton...look hives!!! Trying to hold back a laugh all I could reply was, Oh honey, no that's not possible.
A couple of years ago Cory was jumped on his way home from the beach. He was stabbed in the arm and hit over the head. He made it to a friends house and called for help. Emily was up at school at the time and called us to help him. Early the next morning after he had been released from the E.R. I went to pick him up. I brought him home and put him in our bed. When Bill got home from work and started into the bedroom I told him to be quite because our boy was sleeping in the bed. The look on Bill's face was priceless. He was one of our kids and we wanted to take care of him.
Frog and Toad had ups and downs, they are young it's to be expected, but no matter what they always found their way back to each other. Most of the time I wasn't aware of them seeing each other during their times apart but I always kept in touch with Cory and he would tell me. We checked in with each other, he and I, and I always told him to be a good guy, make good choices and that I loved him.
Cory was in a fatal motorcycle accident three weeks ago and I still can't believe I'll never see him sitting on my couch again. I'll never see that mischievous grin again or see him run screaming from a cotton ball. Emily is heartbroken and Sophie just keeps saying, he was my friend.
No parent is ever prepared to lose a child. It goes against all we learn is natural but the loss of a child in a family of choice puts me in a type of no man's land. Am I mourning too much? Too little? Do I have the right to feel sad and to feel this sense of loss? I am a mother who thankfully still has her children but has lost one all the same.
I love you Cory and I am so grateful and lucky to have had you in my life and family for the past eight years.
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