19 years to live...

...is not a very long time.

One of my son's best friends died yesterday. He was only 19. In the local newspaper he is described as a "man" but to this mother - to his mother - and to anyone else who knows him he is still a child.

A child who was just starting his life. A child who went to work not knowing he'd never be home again. A child of a family who never thought they'd have to live out the rest of their days without him. A child friend who leaves behind other children who are too young to understand how this could happen, how this buddy will never be there again. A childhood gone.

I'm sure he thought of himself as a "man", what man doesn't. What boy doesn't wait impatiently for the day that he would be grown up enough to be considered a "man". But he will never grow to be the man his parents born him to be. He will never grow into the man he dreamt he would become.

19 years to live is not long enough!

R.I.P Shawn, we will miss you.