A mother should never have to wonder what her child’s future might have been. She should never have to imagine his laugh as an echo, his arms as a memory, his name as something spoken in past tense.

Austin was here. He was here. And he was so much more than the way he left.

He was kindness, poured out without hesitation. The kind of person who gave before he took, who cared without needing a reason. He loved fiercely, deeply, without reserve. His heart stretched farther than the world ever seemed to stretch for him, and still, he kept giving. That was just who he was.

If time would allow it, if the past could be stitched back together, his mother knows exactly where she’d go. To Christmas morning, when the air was thick with warmth and light, when laughter bounced off the walls, when she could pull him into a hug and feel the solid truth of him in her arms. She would hold on tighter. She would never let go.

Or maybe she would go back to that last day. The ordinary one, the one that wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Lying beside him in his bed, watching a movie, the flickering screen painting soft shadows across his face. No urgency, no finality—just a mother and her son, together, as they had always been.

And if she had one more chance to say what will never stop ringing in her chest, she would say:

"I love you more than my life, and I would give mine if it meant you could stay."

But time does not bargain. And so she is left with love that has nowhere to go, with arms that still reach for him in dreams, with a heart that beats for both of them now.

Austin would want to be remembered for the love he gave, for the kindness that defined him, for the way he made people feel safe just by being who he was. And he will be. Because love like his doesn’t fade. It lingers, in the spaces he filled, in the people who were lucky enough to be loved by him.

Austin, you were light. You were love. And no amount of time, no force in this world, will ever make you anything less than unforgettable.