The Prodigal Son came up from Phoenix in late January of '11. The worst time of the year. Welcomed home by a sunset snowstorm, the cold air felt good in the lungs, on the sunburnt skin. Slept with the window open that first night, eager to forget the long road behind.
It occurs to me now that I have spent more time without Charlie than I got to spend with him. He died in late July of '15, four and a half years after my frozen homecoming. Now it's March of '20. Do the math.
In the entirety of his lifetime, my nephew was on Earth for 4,441 days. Less time than Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent in the White House. Less time than it took us to lose the Vietnam War.
By late '27, Charlie Wolf's deathspan will have eclipsed his lifespan, and the human stain known as Kalamazoo County Medical Examiner Joyce deJong will still not have admitted that she was wrong when she fraudulently mislabeled his death a suicide.
And I'll still be here, telling you the truth about that... Why? Because I swore to the soul of a lost little boy that I would. Because that's what Uncles do.
Because The Prodigal Son didn't come up from Phoenix for nothing. Here at home, under the milk-white sky, the sunburn has long since faded. My determination will not.
pH 3.1o.2o
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