My beautiful boy.
There are moments in life that become dividing lines, although you rarely recognize them while you are still standing on the safe side. They look ordinary at first. A child walking through the house, laundry folded on the couch, someone asking what’s for dinner, brothers moving in and out of rooms, books stacked everywhere.
You live inside those moments assuming there will be thousands more because life seems to promise that tomorrow will come just like today.
For most of my life as a mother, there were three boys, each so completely themselves that I could recognize who was walking down the hallway just by the sound of their footsteps. Nolen was the beginning of all of it. He was my firstborn, the beautiful redheaded boy who made me a mother.
From the time he was little, Nolen had a mind that was always moving. He questioned things, wanted to understand the world around him, and became bored when things failed to challenge him. Books were everywhere. I read to him every night for more than half his life, until he eventually outgrew anything I could supply aloud and began devouring books on his own.
Reading became something we shared. I knew what it was to disappear into another world through the pages of a book, and watching him discover that same refuge felt like recognizing a piece of myself in him.
He was left-handed and never developed the same love for writing that he had for reading. I tried for years to persuade him to write because I knew how much lived inside that brilliant mind. Yet one of the most precious pieces of writing he left behind was a note thanking his high school librarian during Teacher Appreciation Week. His librarian told us she had never received such a note from a student in more than forty years.
There was something so painfully perfect about that. The boy who disliked writing chose to write when gratitude mattered enough.
But books were only one part of Nolen. He was a son, a grandson, a nephew, and a big brother. My parents in Florida treasured their time with him, and he joined my sister on animal rescue adventures. Liam and Bryce knew him as the brother who had always been part of their world.
When Nolen died, they didn't just lose a brother. They lost someone who had occupied their childhood from the beginning.
Liam went from being the middle brother to the oldest boy in the house. At his fifth-grade graduation, I watched older siblings shout across the auditorium to embarrass and cheer on their younger brothers and sisters. I immediately thought of Nolen because he would have done exactly that. Later, Liam asked if I thought Nolen would have shouted for him, too.
Of course he would have.
There was so much inside that question. Liam was experiencing a milestone while imagining the version of that moment in which his brother was still there. I have watched grief enter my boys' lives that way, through graduations, birthdays, holidays, and ordinary moments when they wonder what Nolen would have said or done.
Bryce's birthday falls just three days after Nolen's. I want Bryce to experience the excitement and joy that belong to his birthday, even while my heart is carrying another year Nolen never reached. Grief cannot be allowed to take Bryce's childhood along with his brother, but pretending the grief disappears would be equally untrue.
Motherhood now requires me to carry both.
The last photographs
Five days before everything changed, none of us knew we were standing inside the final version of our family in which Nolen was alive.
Friday, June 13, 2025, was an ordinary afternoon. Nolen had just gotten his first job as a lifeguard and was thrilled about spending his summer working at a pool. We talked about his schedule, the things he wanted to buy, and what the summer would look like. He was supposed to begin training in just a few days.
While folding laundry, I found a Friday the 13th graphic T-shirt and asked him to put it on so I could take some pictures. He begrudgingly agreed, as any 15-year-old boy might when his mother asks him to pose in a shirt he thinks is cringey.
Those would become the last pictures I would ever take of him.
In one of them, Nolen is standing in our living room, tall and lean, his face caught somewhere between childhood and adulthood. The television is glowing in the background, and the sunlight is coming through the blinds. Everything looks so ordinary.
And then there is the banana sticking out of his pocket.
I started laughing and asked him why he had a banana in there. He looked at me as if my question was the strange part. He was saving it for later.
It was such a small, silly exchange. Today, it is one of the most precious memories I have. When I look at those pictures, I can still hear my laughter and his voice. For a moment, the photograph stops being silent, and I am back in a room where my son is still alive.
For weeks before his death, I had carried an uneasiness I couldn't explain. I repeatedly asked that Nolen stay away from a particular road and be home before dark. I could not explain why I felt so strongly. I only knew that I wanted to keep him safe.
On June 18, 2025, Nolen died on that very road. He was 15 years old.
Around 9:55 that night, my phone rang.
The voice on the other end said only, “Nolen's dead.”
There is no language adequate for what happened inside me when I heard those words. I remember the panic, the ringing in my ears, and a scream that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than thought. The next few hours are a blur.
The following morning, I woke for a fraction of a second believing life was still as it had been before. Then the truth returned.
It wasn't a nightmare. I was living the nightmare.
My son was gone. My firstborn child was dead.
I had spent 15 years trying to keep him safe. I worried about what he ate, what he watched, and where he went. I thought ahead about dangers and did everything I knew to do to protect him. Then suddenly, I was selecting an urn for my child.
I still struggle to understand how the baby I carried inside my body, the little boy whose teeth I brushed and whose books I read, and the teenager whose future I was so excited to watch unfold could be reduced to ashes in a container.
There is one question that has never loosened its grip on me: Did he want his mama? I wonder whether he was afraid, whether he thought of me, and whether he knew how desperately I loved him. I would have given anything to reach him, hold him, and tell him his mother was there.
Instead, I learned my son was dead over the phone.
Learning to live in a world without him
Nolen was supposed to turn 16 that October. He was supposed to get his driver's license, finish school, discover what he wanted to do with his brilliant mind, and grow into the man I knew he could become. He was supposed to watch Liam and Bryce grow up, teasing them, protecting them, and being the big brother only he could be.
That future disappeared with him.
Grief continues revealing itself in the most ordinary places. Dental reminders still arrive. His profile remains on streaming services. His books are still here, but the hands that turned their pages are gone. Watching a new season of a show we shared without him feels wrong because he should be here to watch it with me.
During the first months, I survived on something like emergency energy. Some part of me kept believing there must still be something I could do to fix this. I kept moving, searching for something I could change, some way to make reality different.
There was no way to fix this.
As time passed, I began to understand that grief would not be limited to the night I lost him or even the first year. I will continue discovering the things he should have experienced and the versions of him I will never get to meet. There will be no older voice saying, “Hello Mother,” as he walks into a room. No more books to buy and wait for him to finish. No phone calls or messages to share the things that would have made him laugh.
My heart still reaches for him. I don't expect that to stop.
And yet, I am still here, raising the two boys who need their mother while grieving the boy who is no longer physically here. Some days I do it through panic. Other days I do it while crying in a parking lot before walking into whatever comes next. Sometimes laughter surprises me, and sometimes guilt follows because I am still learning that joy can exist beside grief without betraying the child I lost.
Liam and Bryce deserve a mother who is still living. Nolen deserves never to be erased from the woman his life helped create. I am learning to make room for both.
I want his brothers to grow into themselves without feeling that growing up somehow betrays the brother who cannot grow alongside them. I want them to celebrate their achievements, enjoy their friendships, and experience the fullness of their lives. I also want them to know they can speak Nolen's name, remember him, miss him, and carry him with them for the rest of their lives.
There were three boys. There are three boys in every way that matters to me. Nolen is my firstborn, Liam is my middle child, and Bryce is my youngest. Death has no authority to rewrite the order in which they entered my heart.
I keep returning to those last photographs from June 13. The television is glowing. Light falls through the blinds. Nolen is standing there in that cringey shirt, with a banana sticking out of his pocket. He is 15, brilliant, beautiful, alive, and beginning his first job.
Liam and Bryce still have their big brother. I still have all three of my sons in the same world.
The photographs cannot tell me that five days remain. Only I know that now.
I would give anything to step back into that ordinary afternoon for just ten minutes with the knowledge I have today. I wouldn't need a profound conversation or a perfect goodbye. I would choose the most mundane version possible. I would fold laundry. The television could stay on. His brothers could keep playing their video games.
Nolen could walk into the room carrying a book or looking for food, six feet two inches tall and somehow still my baby. I would hear him say, “Hello Mother.”
This time, I would stop whatever I was doing. I would look at him and hold my boy. I would tell him that he was loved beyond anything language could adequately describe, that nothing about growing up or making mistakes had ever threatened that love, and that being his mother was one of the greatest privileges of my life.
I would tell him there had never been a day of his life when he was not loved.
That will always remain true.
He was the baby I knew before he was born, the redheaded little boy with glasses and a book in his hands, the teenager who wrote a note to thank his librarian, the nephew who helped rescue dogs, and the grandson adored by his Mimi and Papa. He was the big brother his brothers will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
He was Nolen with an E.
He was my beautiful boy.
Nothing that happened on June 18 can reduce him to the violence of that night. Nothing time does to the rest of us can change who he remains within this family.
My heart will spend the rest of my life reaching for Nolen. Although my arms can no longer complete that movement, the love that began before he was born will never stop moving toward him.
Written by: Lauren Peranton