Full Circle (adv.)-through a series of developments that lead back to the original source, position or situation.

We stepped out onto the sidewalk into a light rain. Lifting our umbrellas, we set out and made our way to the coffee shop around the corner. He had just been fitted for a tuxedo for his Senior Prom. Great care was taken to make sure that his bow tie would perfectly match the dress of his chosen lady. He was full of plans and his eyes shone with excitement.

We ordered and then looked around for a seat. We passed a shelf with all manner of games. He said:

“Oh look, they have Battleship. Let’s play!”

And so we did, and I was reminded of another day, now a long time ago. A day when I started my day with a change of plans that I documented on Facebook. It was September 11, 2008

“Staying home with Jackson who is sick. I will take him to the doctor and then spend the day letting him beat me at Battleship.”

Oh if it had only been that simple. But life has a way of dealing you a blow when you least expect it, and when I stepped out into the blue sky of a fall day I could never have imagined where the day would lead me. By that night we would be at Children’s Hospital, and that 6 year-old boy would spend his first night away from home in the I.C.U., with a diagnosis of Leukemia. It would be 3 1/2 years of treatment before the Specter was removed from our lives.

And now I gazed across the table at him, brow furrowed as he considered his move. Six feet tall, with a first attempt at a mustache, honors student, football player. He is headed to college in the fall to be a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and wants to work at Children’s Hospital with kids with cancer. Full circle.

This year has been full of the sweetest of bittersweet moments. He’s my last so there’s that, a season, a role, almost completed. All the milestones the more poignant for that and for the fact that we did not know if he would be here to mark them.

This fall we stood at the edge of the football field ready to walk him out for the Senior Night football game. As we made our way across the field, it seemed a short walk considering all the miles we’d come to be there in that moment.

And so I spent an hour with him, my last born, the one that almost got away, and I could feel the time pouring through my fingers like water. An exquisite moment in time, everything behind him and everything before him. A moment routine to him and precious to me. No words could capture a moment of such sweetness or the mercy of a God that made it possible. Full circle.

He sank my Battleship and I didn’t even have to let him win. And then we finished our coffee, picked up our umbrellas and stepped back out into the rain.