Yesterday our youngest son moved to Florida.

Apparently he has been seriously thinking of this for over a year. I just found out a few weeks ago. Needless to say, I am devistated over this. I have always told my kids they could do what they wanted. If they wanted to leave the area, so be it. I have lived all over and have seen a lot, and if they need to travel they would have our blessing. It would be sad, but I have to think they would always come home to visit sooner or later when they could afford it.
Ever since he was in the Navy, I knew he would be the one to travel. Then one night going back to the base in Georgia, he was helping to drive back with two other friends. Because the owner of the truck was really tired, Steve offered to drive his truck. So the friend and his other friend, JJ were driving in JJ's car. It was raining and the car hit water and went off the road, across the medium and hit head-on a tractor trailer. The other young man was literally cut in half by the seat belt and Steve helped to try and find the body in the pouring rain. He later said all he could smell was gasoline.
I always knew he had never gotten over this and this past year was really sure of it. The accident happened almost 10 years ago, but it is something one can never forget. He even was asked to accompany JJ's body home to Ohio. After that, he admitted to doing drugs and then started drinking. He got out of the Navy and came home and did all kind of jobs. He has done masonry and seems to be really good at what he does. He got hooked up with a girl he had met while knowing JJ and his family. Apparently they kept in touch and now he is moving down there and she is gonna help him get back on track. I have to keep telling myself that he needs time and hopefully this will help.
He was trying to get ready for the past week to go down. His idea was to drive a van down that is older than the hills. He got an hour down the road yesterday and called us to say that he had a flat tire so we had to get the spare (which he did not have in the van)

and drive down to get it to him. I made him call me every so often so I knew he was doing okay.
He finally arrived today at about noon after leaving yesterday at 5pm after the tire problem. This youngest son of mine is 29 years old and I keep waiting for him to grow up.
Sorry for rambling on like this, but I just needed to get this out of my system.