One of my earliest memories was being tasked with the job of keeping an eye on my little brother, Craig. When he was two and I was four, my mom told me I did a better job of watching him than my older brother, Jeff, who was six. It made me feel like such a big girl, and I took the job seriously.

We had a fenced in backyard, and as soon as I’d spot Craig trying to climb the fence to make his escape, I’d run in and let my mom know. For the most part, I remember us playing in the sandbox. Me making houses and Craig carving out roads for his cars and trucks.

But there were two times I slipped up, I got distracted and he got away. The details surrounding both episodes remain crystal clear in my memory.

The first one was the summer we spent at Higgins Lake. We were having a house built in Romeo and we rented a camper while we waited for it to get finished. I turned five that summer and Craig would turn three in September.

We were playing in the sand by the water. One minute Craig was playing beside me and the next he was gone.

“Where’s Craig?” my mom looked up from her book and asked me.

I looked up from where we were building sand castles. “I don’t know. He was right here,” I patted the sand next to me.

My mom started panicking. She started running back and forth along the water’s edge, calling out his name and pleading with God to let her find him.

I started crying, “I’m sorry Mumma. I didn’t see him get up.”

“Oh honey, it’s not your fault,” she said through tears. She kept up her pleading, “Please Jesus, please Jesus. Please let me find him.”

But still, I felt like it was my fault. I was so good at watching him. Why didn’t he say something when he got up? He always wanted me to go in the water with him. Everyone on the beach joined in the search. They looked everywhere. In the camper, on the grounds around the camper, in the public restrooms.

I’d never seen my mom so beside herself. It scared me.

It seemed like hours slipped by, but it couldn’t have been very long before Craig sauntered out of the public restroom, completely oblivious to the fact that he was the reason for all the joy and relief his sudden appearance brought.

“Some guy walked right in on me!” he said indignantly.

We’d looked in the restrooms, but his little legs didn’t hang down long enough for us to spot them under the stalls and he didn’t know how to latch the door.

My mom knelt down, clutched him tightly against her chest and sobbed her heart out.

Craig started crying too. “Why are we crying, Mumma?”

That story was repeated often as we grew up. The thing was, whenever Craig caught my mom crying, he’d tune up and cry with her, “Why are we crying Mumma?”

What a gift it is that God doesn’t allow us to see what the future holds, because Craig did end up being taken from us way too soon. My mom outlived him by more than fifteen years. It’s not supposed to happen that way.

She would often talk about driving along with Craig standing beside her on the bench seat of our car. His left arm draped over her shoulder, head pressed against her and sucking his right thumb. How inconceivable that seems now—being so unmindful of the danger of driving with your toddler standing next to you.

She remembered those days with such nostalgia—having Craig all to herself for those few years before he had to join us at school. Every time Craig’s name came up in the last few years of my mom’s life, her eyes would well up and she’d softly whisper, “Why are we crying Mumma?”