I Lost My Son Five Years Ago—But Last Month, A Kid In Angry Birds Pajamas Changed Everything (9 of 11)

The yellow couch didn’t hurt anymore.

A few weeks later, Elma asked me something unexpected.

“Would you be okay being part of Arvid’s school file as his emergency contact?”

I stared at her. “Are you sure?”

“You’ve become important to him. And to me,” she said. “You don’t have to decide now.”

But I already had.

That night, I brought out a box I hadn’t touched in years. It held Matija’s drawings, toys, little notes he used to leave around the house.

I let Arvid go through it.

He pointed to a sketch Matija once made of the two of us. “That’s you,” he said. “And that’s me, right?”

I nodded.

A week later, something even stranger happened.