Nobody expected fifty bikers at my son’s funeral. Least of all the four teenagers who put him there. I’m not a crier. Twenty-six years as a high school janitor taught me to keep my emotions locked down tight. But when that first Harley rumbled into the cemetery parking lot, followed by another, then another, until the whole place vibrated with thunder—that’s when I finally broke.
My fourteen-year-old boy, Mikey, had hanged himself in our garage. The note he left mentioned four classmates by name. “I can’t take it anymore, Dad,” he’d written. “They won’t stop. Every day they say I should kill myself. Now they’ll be happy.” The police called it “unfortunate but not criminal.” The school principal offered “thoughts and prayers” then suggested we have the funeral during school hours to “avoid potential incidents.” I’d never felt so powerless. Couldn’t protect my boy while he was alive. Couldn’t get justice after he was gone.