Something was wrong with him, back then, and only his mother could see it. Later on, she tried to forget that she even had a son. He was too compliant, too eager to please. And while she had been told, on countless occasions, by her friends and relatives, by her son's teachers, and even by that horrible psychiatrist her own husband had hired for her out of fear and worry, that there was nothing unusual about the boy, she couldn't put the thought out of her head. They said he was young, that his personality was volatile. They said he might've been hit in the head by something on the playground.
He called her Mother now. He'd never done that before. It made her feel strangely nauseous.
He'd stopped injuring random children on a near-daily basis.
He had begun to forget things, important things. He'd been placed in a special class after his grades deteriorated, and although no one would believe her, she maintained that he had once forgotten his own name for several hours.
He was six and no one wanted to think anything was wrong.
He was eight, had been diagnosed with severe arthritis in both legs, and had yet to successfully complete the first grade.
He was twelve and his mother could not love him. He rarely remembered his name anymore. She was the one who the doctors examined.
It would have been his fourteenth birthday. They left him flowers, not that he would have understood. His mother was unable to come, not that she would have wanted to. A plaque read "John, beloved son." Somewhere in the sky John was flying, and never knew.