No small hand will go unheld

In the morning I walk Eli to school. When we get within sight of the front door, as is his custom, Eli bursts into a sprint as if I've pushed his 'on' button. "Love you!" he calls over his shoulder without looking back, and then he is gone.

On the subway I pull my purple headphones over my ears and turn on The Daily, a New York Times podcast. The episode is about families of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School who are suing Alex Jones for perpetuating and profiting off the lie that they are actors, that their children's murder was a hoax. The host interviews a reporter who interviewed the father of a 6-year-old boy named Jesse Lewis.

"He remembers that day in such excruciating detail," she says: breakfast, a conversation about gingerbread houses, the moment when his son said "Love you" and darted around a corner for the last time.

That night after Eli is asleep I slip into his room. It's a stuffy, humid evening, maybe the first hot night of the season, and Eli's blanket is tangled into bunches on top of his face; all four of his limbs are tossed carelessly out to its sides, like he's an overripe fruit that's burst open in the heat.

He takes up so much space in the world that it's impossible to think of him not being in it any longer. Sometimes — here is a ghoulish confession — I try to imagine it in a clinical way, probing the void the way a tongue pokes at a rotting tooth. But it's like they say: There's literally no word in our language for a parent who has lost a child.

On his next birthday, I think, Eli will be the same age as Jesse and as Charlotte, Olivia, Dylan, Madeleine, Catherine, Ana, James, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Avielle, Benjamin and Allison. And then, in the next year, one by one, he will almost certainly outlive them.

Almost — that caveat upon which the world hangs. I used to tiptoe into Eli's room at night just to watch his chest rise and fall, just to assure myself I'd see him in the morning. Now I stand outside the gate at school and follow him with my eyes as he scrambles inside. Please come back to me, I think, and then he is gone.

There are the fields we’ll walk across
In the snow lightly falling.
In the snow lightly falling,
There are the fields we’ll walk across.

There are the houses we’ll walk toward
In the snow lightly falling.
In the snow lightly falling,
There are the houses we’ll walk toward.

There are the faces we once kissed
In the snow lightly falling.
In the snow lightly falling,
There are the faces we once kissed.

Incredible how we laughed and cried
In the snow lightly falling.
In the snow lightly falling,
Incredible how we laughed and cried.

Incredible how we’ll meet again
In the snow lightly falling.
In the snow lightly falling,
Incredible how we’ll meet again.

No small hand will go unheld
In the snow lightly falling.
In the snow lightly falling,
No small hand will go unheld.

No voice once heard is ever lost
In the snow lightly falling.
In the snow lightly falling,
No voice once heard is ever lost.

—Dick Allen, "Solace," Newtown, CT, December 2012