Having forewarned me it would be difficult to look at, the man slid a photo across my office conference table. I forced my eyes to look down at the image. There was no need to gaze long upon the face. My heart wanted to deny it was he. However, those were clearly his eyes. The nose as I had seen it since his birth. Though his overall features were distorted, there was no denying who the picture captured. Gripped by this reality, I raised my eyes to the man across the table—who sat silent while awaiting my verdict. Deep within I wanted to scream, “I never saw this face before. I do not know who he is.” Yet I did. I knew with certainty. My voice cracked as I acknowledged to this visitor from the county coroner’s office that the photo had captured my youngest child. The body they found was the boy I once held so tenderly. Thus, just one month after his thirtieth birthday, an end came to a fifteen-year journey of watching his painful descent into drug abuse and its attendant ugliness. Now I knew what my wife and I long feared—our prodigal would never return home.


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