Remember me.

Ten letters. Four syllables. Two words. And one of them was an overused pronoun.

As innocuous as they appeared, I knew better. After all, those two words had shaken me to the core on not one, but three occasions. Because each occasion had brought tears and a new chapter of my life.

Staring at the framed poem in front of me, I scoffed at the two words. There was no way my son Jake had known the importance of the ten tiny letters when he wrote them. I had shielded Jake from the details of that fated night. Yet, they were the exact words Jake had used as a form of comfort as he moved out for the first time.

“A haiku, of course it had to be a haiku.” My voice cracked at the words. “And with French, my silly, wonderful, magnificent son.”

Jake had handed me the gift just as he and his roommate, Scott, drove away to their first real apartment after scoring internships their first summer of college. It was only a half hour away, and I would be seeing them within the week, but those facts didn’t help it all hurt any less.

I read and reread the poem over and over again, long after I’d already buried the words in my heart. Of all the things I had done in life, raising Jake had been the one thing I was proudest of.

Jake was a great student, attending the local university tuition-free thanks to his SAT scores. The internship he scored was not only in his chosen field, but also in a prominent company in his field. I didn’t pretend to understand the technology behind what Jake was going to school for, but Jake soared in it. All signs indicated it would lead to amazing employment opportunities, and what omega-father wouldn’t want that?

I had been lucky that Jake had chosen to live at home his first year of college to remain debt-free. Granted, I might not have been ready for him to leave just yet, but I’d had an entire year more with him than many fathers had with their children. I had learned a long time ago not to take a single moment with my loved ones for granted.

At twenty years old, I had been living the good life. I excelled in college, had a dashing and loving alpha boyfriend, and was on track to get a coveted art residency for the summer. Life couldn’t have been more perfect.

Yet a stranger who’d had one drink too many changed everything.

One moment, me and my alpha boyfriend were driving home from our one-year anniversary dinner; the next thing I knew, headlights were much too close and the sound of crumpling metal filled my ears. Most of the crash was gone from my memory, something I counted as one of the biggest blessings of my life. I remembered hanging upside down, looking over and seeing Jacob staring at me, his eyes glossy and wrong.

And before I could begin to process the scene around me, Jacob spoke two words. Just two.

“Remember me.”

Those would be the last two words I ever heard him say.

The next thing I remembered was waking up in a hospital bed in a hazy fog with a nurse telling me over and over again that both me and the baby were going to be fine.

Up until that point, I hadn’t known I was pregnant.

Jacob and I had talked about getting married and having lots and lots of babies. I had even envisioned silly ways to tell Jacob when I did, in fact, become pregnant. My alpha-father left my omega-father at the word of my impending birth, something my late omega-father had never fully gotten over, and I planned to do it right for my kids. Hell, I had more plans for pregnancy announcements than I ever planned to have children.

Nowhere in all my planning had I even fathomed being told I was pregnant the night of Jacob’s death and having to tell him over his grave. What should’ve been one of the happiest days of my life had turned into a nightmare, thanks to a stranger who had drunk too many beers that night.

Of course, the man who had hit us after leaving a local bar in anger—over what, my lawyer never said—walked away unscratched, while Jacob never made it out of the wreck. The insurance company paid a settlement large enough for me to finish my schooling and still comfortably raise Jake until I was able to get a decent job with my degree. The stranger did pay for his crime in prison, but none of that would bring Jacob back.

None of that would give Jake his father.

Now the memories assaulted me, from that fateful night to Jake’s first steps, to the first time I handed Jake keys to the car. Some memories were practically debilitating, while others set my heart soaring.

All of them had me fighting back tears. My boy was off to sprout his wings and fly. I couldn’t be happier.

In that moment, I made a decision, one I had thought about for years, but had lacked the courage to follow through on. One that always seemed too selfish, too self-absorbed, and too risky.

Remember me.

Jake’s poem gave me the courage to own those words, to shape them, to make them work for me.

I was going to remember me for me. Not who I was in order to survive. No. I was going to be the Ethan Rhodes I had been before my world crumbled.

I was going to go back to my love of art, and I was going to pursue my lost dreams.

Remember me. No, that wouldn’t quite do, I decided. Remember the me I wanted to be. That was what I was going to do from here on out.