Hovering on the edge of tears

I have been hovering on the edge of tears for the past several months, for reasons I won’t go into here but which should be obvious to anyone who has followed my column recently. But my son sent me over the edge recently when he texted me out of the blue: “I don’t know if I’ve told you this recently, but I love you, Dad.”

For the record, he tells me that often.

Also for the record, he is the one who taught me that it is a manly thing for a man to say “I love you.”

I was raised by a loving father who never learned to say “I love you” from his strict, German immigrant father. There was never any question about how much my father loved me. He just never said it — until he was dying of cancer. And when he said it, I said it back, although I found it awkward to say because Kerth men just never talked that way to each other.

But because my son was still young while that drama was playing out, he learned to say the words to me in everyday situations, and he taught me how to say what my heart felt but never knew how to express in words.

So now, every time we talk on the phone, we end by saying “I love you.” I thank him for teaching me to do that.

The day he recently texted me that loving message out of the blue happened to be the day I was watching CNN and heard the 911 call that the mother placed in fear that her son might perform a horrific act of violence at the Old National Bank in Nashville, Kentucky, on April 10.

She called 911 to say that she had heard from her son’s roommate, telling her that her son had left a disturbing note that hinted that he might shoot up the bank where he worked. To her credit, she immediately called 911 to tell authorities of the threat.

Unfortunately, her call came too late to prevent the act that would cost the lives of five innocent people, as well as the life of her son. Others, including police officers, were inflicted with lifelong injuries and traumas.

But in her 911 voice, ragged with fear, you could hear the love she had for her son. She was certain that he didn’t own any guns (at least as far as she knew, because later facts would reveal that he had only recently purchased the weapon he would use in his attack) and she wanted police to know that the boy she knew as peaceful and non-violent had left a note that hinted at mayhem.

I wept as I heard that 911 call on TV, because I slid down her terrified voice into the shoes of a parent who loved unconditionally a child who seemed to have gone off the track to unimaginable violence. Her voice seemed as convinced as any of us are that our child is incapable of any action as unthinkable as this.

She did the right thing when she learned of the threat. She made the most unthinkable call a parent can make.

But for the rest of her life she will wonder with guilt — deservedly or not — where she might have gone wrong. Because in our hearts, our children are the products of our creation. And if they go wrong or if they go right, we own their actions — deservedly or not — as products of our creation.

And if I have learned anything from grief — and I can attest that I have had plenty of experience in that arena — it is that the surprising star of the grief show is guilt, whether it is deserved guilt or not.

There is the guilt over words said or not said.

The guilt of not having the power to ward off the inevitable.

The guilt of simply being a survivor while loved ones were taken away.

This mother in Nashville recognized that there were lives other than her own son’s that deserved protection. If it meant that her own son might be detained or imprisoned — or even killed — in order to save strangers’ lives, she weighed in on the right side of the equation.

Not every parent in that situation makes that decision.

When Brian Laundrie murdered his girlfriend Gabbie Petito in August of 2021, Laundrie’s parents kept his whereabouts secret and are alleged to have made arrangements for him to leave the country.

In the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the parents of the convicted Tsarnaev brothers insisted that their sons were innocent, and that the bombing was a “U.S. government conspiracy…fabricated by the US special services” to test the American public’s reaction to a terrorist threat and the imposition of martial law in a US city.

Who can say how we might behave when our child does the unthinkable? Our love for them, of course, is unconditional.

But do we have enough love left over for the rest of mankind to stop our beloved children from destroying the lives of other parents’ loved ones?

I wept with grief over that question as I heard that mother’s 911 call about her son.

And then I wept with joy later that day when my son, out of the blue, texted me that he loved me.

So if you’re looking for a feel-good weepy moment, reach out and love your kid today, out of the blue, even though it won’t change the weepy news you’ll be hearing about kids gone wrong on CNN tomorrow.

Or, well, maybe it will.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.

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