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Such a tiny stretch of existence for an adored boy who brightened the world around him, as if he’d single-handedly hung the sun and the moon.

Until one day, just like any other normal day, when his mother delivered the toddler to daycare, kissing him goodbye on the forehead. He’d be back home within a few hours, after all. But on that afternoon, last Wednesday, a vehicle would crash through the front window of the First Roots Early Education Academy, plowing across the room before penetrating the drywall separating the room next door. More than 2,500 kilograms of crunching steel mayhem, leaving a train of destruction, hurting seven youngsters and three adult staff members.

When next Behnoush saw her son, he was in the back of an ambulance, paramedics frantically trying to save the child’s life. In vain.

“I died with that cursed phone call from kindergarten. Hearing the screams and cries on the other end, I died right then — I was done, forever.

“All I can see in my mind is your tiny, beautiful body in the ambulance as they gave you CPR. You left, and our lives were destroyed forever, my little darling.”

Mother was speaking directly to her dead child, reading aloud a letter she wrote to him, a lamentation of such deep loss and despair that her words elicited moans and wailing from the hundreds of mourners who packed the chapel bedecked with white flowers — roses and lilies and baby’s breath — at the Elgin Mills Cemetery Sunday morning, seated and standing along the back wall, overflowing into the vestibule.

They’d filed by the family earlier, embracing the parents, kneeling low to cradle them in their arms, trying to take some of the weight of their sorrow. But how could anyone alleviate so much pain, the ache that will remain forever?

“We had been waiting so long for an angel to be born into our lives,” Behnoush said, speaking in Persian.

Fourteen years the couple had spent praying for a child.

Liam was their only child, a miracle child, the only grandchild yet.

“Since the day I found out that a little one was going to be added to your father’s and my life, life took on a new colour and fragrance. Little by little, I started sharing news of your arrival with relatives and close friends.”

When Liam was born, a healthy baby boy, it was the happiest day of their lives.

“When I heard your cry, I knew the world was mine. Nothing could ever beat that feeling. The dream of my childhood had come true. The kindest father took care of us. Me, fluttering around you like a butterfly, and you, who had become our whole world.

“Day by day, you grew bigger, and we fell even more in love. Your beautiful laughs, your moonlike face, your tiny hands and feet …”

On a giant screen overhead, moments of Liam’s life played on a loop, captured on video and still photos. Here he is as a peacefully sleeping infant, there he is giggling by the Christmas tree; here being tossed in the air by his father, there taking his first unsteady steps, plop-falling on his behind, but determinedly getting back up again.

How many memories can you make in so brief a time on Earth? Infinite, of course, when every moment is precious, and now, because there will be no more, these images that will crack a parent’s heart. The endless presence of absence since “that cursed day.”

“How could I bear to leave you behind and go?” the mother asks, speaking into the void. “I wished my foot had been crushed, broken, so I wouldn’t have had to leave you. The ‘if-onlys’ and the regrets in my mind eating me alive.”

“I wish you were still in the baby’s room. I wish you had been sick that day and hadn’t gone. I wish you had gone to the yard earlier. I wish I had come to pick you up sooner.”

A tragedy beyond imagining and for which police have provided only scant information. The bloody randomness of it. A vehicle — full-size Hyundai SUV — parked outside the facility, driver at the wheel, and suddenly it’s flying through the window. But police were quick to say it was “not a deliberate act.”

Two of the children hit remain in critical condition.

Vinay Kumar Gupta, 70, was arrested at the scene, charged soon thereafter with one count of dangerous operation causing death and two counts of dangerous operation causing bodily harm. He’s been released on $25,000 bail.

“Seventeen months — just seventeen months — we lived, we loved, and then everything ended,” Behnoush bravely continued. “It’s been three days now, and we’ve been like walking dead in our own home. Life doesn’t go on without you, Liam. In the mornings, no matter how long I wait, you don’t call out to me. We no longer make breakfast, lunch or dinner. We no longer play, sing or hug.”

Horrors happen all the time. You just don’t think it’ll happen to you. You have to believe it won’t happen to you and those you love or how can daily life be endured?

A day after, the provincial government announced that legislative changes would be made to restrict parking near windows and exterior walls of child-care facilities, and to require higher curbs and bollards in some areas.

It was left to Liam’s aunt, Saeedeh Pourmusa, in her eulogy, to address the political consequences, which should have been mandated before a tragedy occurred.

“A daycare should be the safest place for our children.”

Yet they’re built next to parking lots, inside commercial plazas. “How does that protect our kids? No parent should ever have to go through this pain, and no child should ever feel the same fear and horror that Liam and his friends went through that day.

“We’re here to remember Liam, but we want also to be his voice. Those who make and enforce child safety rules must be accountable. Parents have the right to ask and to demand a response. We must be heard. Let this be Liam’s legacy. Let his story save other lives. Let this be the beginning of Liam’s Law — to safeguard daycares and all child care facilities.

“For Liam and for every child, let’s make sure no other parents will ever be standing in the place where Liam’s family are standing now.”

After the melancholy songs in Persian, accompanied by a dayereh — tambourine — mourners moved into the cemetery for internment. Liam’s parents sat at the edge of the grave as white roses were tossed onto the casket and a cluster of brightly coloured balloons — the toddler loved balloons — were released, floating away into the sky.

Liam’s mother had said: “Dad and I will come to you soon again, if there really is another world.

“I love you, my one and only, my life, my heart, my breath.”