A lightning strike might be the most inexplicable way to lose a loved one.
Ethan Lawrence, only 19 years old, died last Sunday after what appears to be a direct hit as he was running at a park in the US state of Florida.
“Every parent says their kid is amazing, but my kid was amazing,” said Lourdes Lawrence, Ethan’s mother.
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Lawrence was a star athlete at West Broward High School who went to Jacksonville University on a cross-country scholarship.
He transferred to Nova Southeastern University when his girlfriend, Andrea Lares, had a baby six months ago.
Lawrence was training in a bid to make the NSU cross-country team as a walk-on.
“I’m still in shock, I’m still trying to process all of it, the way it happened, in a matter of seconds,” Lares said.
“He texted me in the morning, ‘Good morning love, I woke up late today’.”
The Lawrence family is reeling but gathered on Monday to let the world know what was lost in that flash of lightning.
“I’m so grateful and thankful that I had 19 beautiful years with my son,” Lourdes Lawrence said.
“We had an unbreakable bond.
“He would text me every morning in college, as a college student, ‘Good morning mumma, I’m on my way to run with the team,’ ‘Hey mum, I’m back from running with the team, my legs feel like bricks’ — just telling me his day, Facetiming me, calling me.
Ethan’s dad, Patrick Lawrence, said his wife once asked their son whether he had any regrets.
“No, nothing, (he had) no regret of leaving Jacksonville or coming here, or going to work here or anything, he enjoyed his life,” Patrick said.
Lourdes said: “I want to strangle someone but there’s nothing I can do. I couldn’t help my baby the last minutes of his life.
“I couldn’t run for him, I couldn’t run next to him — (or hope the lightning would) get me, not him.”
She then held up a small cross, studded with diamonds.
“I gave my son, when he graduated, a gold chain with a cross,” she said.
“Today we went to the site and Ethan led me to where he was struck.
“And I saw the hole in the ground and I looked down and my husband said, ‘Look, there’s his cross. That’s him telling me, ‘Mom, I’m OK, I’m OK, you (will) be OK’.”
Ethan ran and won the first Aden Perry 5K race, to honour a young man who died while trying to rescue a drowning person.
Since then, Aden’s mom and Ethan’s mum have become friends.
Now they share the same horrific pain.
“The only thing that gives me comfort is he died doing what he loved, running,” Ethan’s mother said.