“Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday, and then other times it feels like it’s been so long since I’ve seen him,” Connie Alexander Boss revealed. While she still struggles with her son’s untimely death last December, Boss finds solace in her unwavering faith that she will see her son again.
“When I think about him, I try not to dwell on how he left this earth,” she says. “This is not totally the end. That is where my peace comes from.”
The last time Boss heard from her son was the day prior to his death - and the mum has shared that there was no sign that he was troubled.
“I’d been sick, so he texted to ask how I was feeling,” she says. “That was the last time we talked. To the extent that Stephen may have been in a black depression — no, not Stephen. He was so in tune with analysing and trying to make himself better, reading self-help books, so this came as a complete shock.”
Even when hearing the news that her son was nowhere to be found, Boss says that suicide “was not my first thought — that it had been his hand. I really thought something had happened to him”.
'When I think about him, I try not to dwell on how he left this earth.' Photo / Instagram
On the morning of December 13, Connie was alerted that Stephen was missing. “I immediately started placing calls to see if anyone had seen or spoken with him,” she recalls. “Finding that nobody had, my brother and I bought plane tickets.”
Due to her illness, she got a rapid Covid test prior to getting on the plane. “And my brother called to ask where I was. Then my sister-in-law called: ‘Hey, we’re just checking on where you are.’ In the pit of my stomach, I knew something was wrong,” Boss says.
“I went to my parents’ house and walked in. They were just standing there looking at me, and I said, ‘Have you heard something?’ All I remember hearing was, ‘Connie, he’s gone.’ And I remember screaming or falling to my knees. The rest of the day is more of a blur.”
In the days and weeks that followed, Boss struggled to come to terms with the truth of what had happened. “You find yourself in a lot of introspection, a lot of looking back. Did I miss something? Did he mean something when he said this?” she says.
“At this point, I’m in realisation, I guess. When I wake up in the morning, it does hit me that, oh my God, he really is not physically here. But then in my head I can hear him say, ‘Hey, Mom. I’m okay.’”
Sometimes, Boss picks up her phone to text Stephen and reads over their final messages. “He started that last text with, “I love you, Mom,’” she says. “And I responded, ‘I love you more.’”
