Absent is an English short story from 1990. They do not have good relationship or communication etc. The son is on drugs and the mother has lost the control over him. She feels that she can not do anything about it. He lives an escapist life (outside reality) and he is not a good student in the school. Maybe it is because he hangs around with drug dealers and bad company. He is somewhere with strange people and misses his mother's food and when his fatal accident happened she was preparing a supper for him. The mother can just watch her son's life being destroyed by drug abuse. She wants him to come back home and live a normal life. In our society we know that there are a lot of young people getting addicted to drugs after they try it several times because of friend's pressure. I heard that in some clubs it is very normal being "high" of drugs, for instance Ecstacy, marihuana etc. The doormen and the police do not control it that much. They come to those places just when there are fights otherwise their inspections are not very good and these young people feel like no one controls them. They do whatever they want. The way they become addict to those serious drugs is trying several stuff in those places. I think if the parents and the police were a little bit harder on them the problem would not be so big today. I think the title "Absent" means that the son is not present in the real life. One of the most important issues today, when we discuss juvenile delinquency, is drugs. So actually you can prevent better this problem if those young people lived in a better familiar environment, for instance having constant talks with their parents about this issue. Most of the people who get addicted to drugs don't have much contact wit their parents. The story ends with the boy being killed by a dramatic motorbike accident and we do not know how he got involved to it. The mother just knew about it from the police.