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What sorts of things constitute a parent’s worst nightmare? Discovering that a child is on drugs or failing in school? Learning that a child has a chronic, life-threatening health problem?
Seeing him or her still living at home long beyond the time when they should be independent? Getting that middle-of-the-night phone call with news of some injury, or worse?
I got the phone call. It came as we were heading into a summer that was going to be special for our family. We had two graduation parties planned—one from college and one from medical school—and I was retiring from the Air Force. We were finally out of the college tuition business forever! However, this spirit of celebration came crashing down on June 8, when the phone rang at 1:20 a.m. I answered, expecting bad news about my ninety-year-old mother-in-law. Instead, I heard the voice of the fiancée of our youngest son, Jeremy. She was calling from an emergency room in Savannah, Georgia, to tell us that Jeremy had been shot.…
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