Since July, when Scott died, I have wanted to write about it. It’s what I do – write about stuff. It’s how I process. But I think, nobody can write about this. Because it’s impossible. No one can touch with words the bottomless grief that he left behind in his parents and siblings. No one can capture the perfection of a 22 year old boy who died horribly decades too soon.

What is the shape of the hole left in too many lives to count? Is it his shape? Big and tall – I can see the outline in my mind’s eye. Broad and burly with a floppy shock of hair. I color in the outline I see, the outline left when he was wrenched out of the world. I color his hair sunflower yellow and his eyes blue. The crinkles come next, at the corners of his ever-smiling eyes. The grin, shit-eating and fun, and full of limitless love for whoever he was smiling at. The low slung jeans fade forward from the void of his outline, cornflower blue, muddy cuffs. He just got in from the farm where he worked all day with his dad. Tending cows, mending fence, plowing in straight, fragrant lines.