It was Thursday
I remember because the mail was late
But that’s another story
Another complaint
They called me around 10pm
Ricky was killed in a car accident
And I sat down in shock, too shocked to cry
My nephew Ricky…one of those people
From the time he was a child we all said
He’ll die at an early age, he’ll come to
Some sort of disaster, hell, he once
Let himself fall out a second story window
To see if the bushes would break his fall
They did, he only broke one leg
He jumped out of a moving car thinking
If he were running as he jumped
He could run along side the car without getting hurt
Broken arm and two teeth that time
When he started to drive we all shuddered
He had so many accidents we quit noticing
He was just hell bound for disaster
But when the call came, I forgot all that
Suddenly I remembered only the time
His mother and I were pregnant at the same time
I remember the red faced baby boy that weighed
10 lbs, his mother barely 100lbs herself
We had our sons close, we would cry with them
When they cried, we patched their scrapes
Laughed at their gapped tooth smiles
We cried even more as they grew but God
Did we love those two boys, my sister-in-law
And I, we had so many dreams for them
My son had long since been in prison
And now Ricky is gone…I don’t prescribe
To the where did I go wrong type of parenting
But I remember those happy little boys
Coming in from fishing, two tiny fish in their creel
As proud as if they had caught a dozen trout
And my tears finally came, and I realized then
You never really expect the worst…never