Can't believe you're gone bro.' RIP

Something terrible has happened in our quiet, mostly wealthy, generally-considered-provincial  city.
It is something so tragically unexpected that nothing will ever feel quite the same again.
On Friday night, a teenage boy was fatally wounded after being stabbed..
Apparently it was a drug related crime.
Apparently it was a personal argument.
Apparently the victim was only a few yards from his destination, the hostel he was staying in.
Apparently the victim and his alleged attacker had been at a nearby party....and there it is, the only "apparently," that mattered to me at first.. 
The selfish "apparently."
The "apparently," that  clamped a steel ring of panic around my heart.
Because all I could think was... it could have been one of our kids. 
They could have been at that party. 
They might have been caught up in that fight. 
They might have been walking home along that road.
But they weren't....and he was.
The tragedy is his not theirs
And for that I am selfishly and eternally thankful.
Thankful that this isn't their story. 
Because I cannot begin to imagine the agonising grief of the family whose story it is.
As a parent, there is nothing more terrifying than the thought that something might happen to your children.
That fear is what makes letting go so hard.
And this story is everything you dread.                                                     
The victim, left at the side of the road, had been at school with our daughter.
Her contemporary from the age of 9 until last year.
He wasn't a close friend but Chichester is a small place.
All the seventeen and eighteen year olds know each other.
They mostly orbit the same party scene.
They mostly acknowledge each other in passing, coolness factor allowing.
They mostly share a common friend, 
A separation of mostly one degree.
 He was a familiar part of the  teenage fabric that binds them all together, this young victim.
And now he's gone.
And the fabric is torn.
And our teenagers are left dazed and a little less carefree.
His life, a could-be-their-life, was cut short.
It ended before it had been truly lived.
And suddenly all that we have and all that we are seems fleeting and fragile.
The base of certainty upon which our teenagers danced, is cracked.
Uncertainties are seeping through.
Life is not endless but finite.
"Now," is not forever, it's transitory.

Around the tree where the stabbing took place, candles burn amidst bunches of daffodils and wrapped roses.
A card reads:
" Can't believe you're gone bro'. I'll miss you."
"He was always a loner," says our daughter, " even when we were ten. "
She tries to stem the flow of tears.
" And people at school....they weren't always nice to him then."
She looks at me, her dark eyes haunted by painful memories.
Unwanted questions float in the air between us..
How did the other kids make  him feel? Was school a horrible place for him? Was he hurt by what people said? Was he lonely? Was he lost? Did he long for a different life?
I hug her close, our eighteen year old daughter, but I can't take away her pain.
" He went out with my friend," she says, " do you remember?. They were together for ages.  I used to tell you about them.  How neither of them could ever sleep and how, on the nights they weren't together they would lie in their rooms and talk and talk and talk on Skype. They wouldn't stop until one of them fell asleep."
And suddenly I did remember.
Not him, not the person, but the story.
I remember being amazed at such a depth of emotion in two people who were so young.
Wondering at the all-consumingness of first love.
Remembering how nothing else exists but the two of you.
How the only thing that matters in the world, is what you share.
How it's impossible to believe that what you have will ever end.
How, just for a while, you feel complete and whole.
And I smile, because at least he had that. . 
At least, however short his life, he experienced one of the most important reasons for living.

And I hope, wherever he is now, he no longer feels like a loner.
I hope he no longer feels hurt or lost..
I hope he isn't alone. 
And I hope, with all my heart, that someone is talking and talking and talking to him, until he falls asleep.
.

                                                               RIP Luke