No one could have predicted the arrival of fifty bikers at my son\u2019s funeral. Certainly not the four teens responsible for his death.<\/p>\n
Crying has never been my thing. Spending twenty-six years as a high school janitor hardened me, made me learn how to keep everything bottled up. But when that first Harley pulled into the cemetery lot, then another, then one more\u2014until the entire place was shaking with their roar\u2014that\u2019s when I finally lost it.<\/p>\n
My fourteen-year-old son, Mikey, had taken his own life in our garage. His suicide note named four of his classmates. \u201cI can\u2019t do this anymore, Dad,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey won\u2019t stop. Every day they tell me I should kill myself. Now they\u2019ll finally get what they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The police called it \u201ctragic but not criminal.\u201d The school principal offered \u201cthoughts and prayers,\u201d then suggested scheduling the funeral during school hours to \u201cprevent any issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never felt so powerless. Couldn\u2019t protect my boy while he was alive. Couldn\u2019t get justice after he was gone.<\/p>\n
Then Sam showed up at our door. Six-foot-three, leather vest, gray beard down to his chest. I recognized him\u2014he pumped gas at the station where Mikey and I would stop for slushies after his therapy appointments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No one could have predicted the arrival of fifty bikers at my son\u2019s funeral. Certainly not the four teens responsible for his death. Crying has never been my thing. Spending twenty-six years as a high school janitor hardened me, made me learn how to keep everything bottled up. But when that first Harley pulled into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-random-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6791,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790\/revisions\/6791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buzzfeednews.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}