I can’t imagine a more difficult cross than the one you were asked to bear. Stay strong. I will offer my Mass for you, your precious son and your intentions tomorrow, and ask God to grant you a special consolation of peace and reassurance. I lost my 20 year old brother in 2005 to an auto accident. While I was not his parent, I can understand many of your unanswered questions and the seeming unfairness of it all. We expect our children to outlive their parents. It is unnatural when a young person dies. It is unexpected. It is unfair.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t know why your son was allowed to die. But I am here with you as you suffer in pain. In faith, together, I hope we can help you, in some small way, endure.
Theresa A. Thomas

“If you have to, take anything from me, but please protect him and keep him safe.” I did the same constantly, always praying that God would give me any other cross”

He did take something from you
By taking your son to heaven, He has protected him and is keeping him safe.
God has definitely given you another cross to bear.

In our humaness, we see life here on earth ast the ultimate. But it is life in heaven with the Lord that is our greatest joy. Your son is expweriencing greater joy. We on the other hand, must continue to carry our crosses, enjoy the peace we have through his grace,and continue to pray.

Losing a child turns your world upside down in a way that is unimaginable to those who have not experienced it. I told one friend that if I had placed a pot of water to boil on the stove and turned the fire on under it only to watch it turn to ice in front of my eyes, things could not have seemed more wrong — just wrong, impossibly, horribly wrong because this is not supposed to happen.

Somebody gave me the book, A Grief Unveiled, written by Gregory Floyd, a Catholic father, after the accidental death of one of his sons, John Paul, 6. He chronicles the first year of grief in great detail. At one point many months after, he asks his wife the “why” question and is stunned that she says, “Because God loves John Paul and loves us.” Finally that is the answer as to why your son has departed this life ahead of you, because God loves him and loves you. God loves you. Ultimately that is the answer to everything. Right now we trust because we cannot understand. Someday we will understand.

One thing I can tell you is that no matter where you are in this journey — it will get better.

I can not even begin to understand what you are going through. My prayers to you and your family. The pain you are enduring as a mother must be heartwrenching. When we can’t see past the shadows, Holy Mother Church (militant and triumphant) prays for us and with us)
One thing I would offer is the life of St. Rita. In God’s infinite wisdom, He may have allowed your son to enter into His heavenly home rather than stay here on earth and face something worse.

http://www.saintritashrine.org/ritalife.htm

St. Rita -

THE DEATH of her husband, Ferdinando, made St. Rita a widow, but she was not left alone. God had blessed her, as we have already observed, with two handsome sons who were now grown up, and on these she centered her utmost care and attention. She daily implored God, with the most fervent prayers, to preserve their innocence and aid her to guide them in the path of His holy law in which she had instructed them. Giovanni and Paulo, the children of St. Rita, became what their Saintly mother molded them. They grew up God-loving and God-fearing children. They loved their good mother with all the fullness of their boyish hearts, and no boys could be more respectful or obedient to a mother than were Giovanni and Paulo.

As they advanced in years, St. Rita, with the quick perception of a mother, noticed that a change was taking place in the characters of her sons and that sometimes, not unlike their departed father, they appeared to be sullen, morose and irritable. Especially did she observe a notable change in Giovanni, who was scarcely sixteen years of age. Young as they were, and even in spite of the religious training they had received from their mother, Giovanni and Paulo had become somewhat imbued with that false idea of honor and justice which made it incumbent on the nearest of kin to execute vengeance on the slayer of a relative. This criminal and unauthorized right of revenge was much in vogue in Italy at the time St. Rita lived, and was called: La Vendetta.

Though St. Rita had observed that from time to time her sons made remarks relative to the murder of their father, it never entered her mind that they had any thought of avenging his death. One day, however, from a conversation she overheard between her two sons she learned, to her great surprise and sorrow, that they were inclined to revenge the assassination of their father.

Like the good and saintly mother she was, St. Rita determined to destroy and stifle so heinous and criminal a desire. Summoning Giovanni and Paulo to her side, she told them what she had heard and begged them, with tears and supplications, to erase from their minds all desire of revenge, and to forget that their father had been assassinated. She also placed before their eyes the example of Christ, who asked pardon for those who had crucified Him and for whom He suffered to give them eternal life. By means of this beautiful example, she sincerely hoped she would be able to persuade her sons to pardon the murderers of their father. She furthermore reminded them that though they had lost their earthly father, they would gain a heavenly one if they would pardon from their hearts. And finally she represented to them the terrible sin the homicide commits, and plainly told them that they themselves would be murderers if they avenged the death of their father.

In this manner did St. Rita try to keep and guide her sons in the path of the fear of God. After some time, as we may read in the Decree of her Canonization, when she saw her sons persist in their desire for vengeance, she fled to the crucifix and related the whole affair to Christ, fervently beseeching Him either to change the desires of her sons, or no longer spare their lives. God heard the prayer of St. Rita. Both her sons died within a year, well-prepared to go before the judgment seat of Almighty God.

I am so very sorry for the tragic loss of your son. As you have already realized, I am sure, even if God himself came and gave you a perfect explanation for taking your son home to Him, it would not take away the pain and suffering you are feeling. There is no way around the pain at this time. Perhaps you could just stay quietly next to Mary at calvary, when she watched her divine son die a horrible death to fulfill the will of the Father. Remember too that Jesus wept at Lazarus’s death when he saw the sorrow of Martha and Mary. God sees your pain and sorrow, and weeps with you. May He hold you safe in His Sacred Heart and may Our Blessed Mother cover you with her mantle of prayer.