As we are staring at the one year anniversary of Tyler’s death in the face, I am a little surprised at how fast this last year has gone.  Life and Death stare at each other across a great battlefield with us humans in the thick of the war.  Time is the jester on the sidelines laughing at us all, knowing that no matter who wins he will continue his merry dance of tick tock tick tock. Strangely enough Life and Death are brothers of a sort - without the death of Jesus, we couldn’t experience life eternal. Without death on earth, life in heaven would never begin.  Here we are a year later the mixed feelings I have regarding both life and death are no where near sorted out.

Everyone wants to know about all the “firsts” in the first year. My readers have all had a front seat of the highs and lows. If I had to pinpoint the worst firsts I would say Tyler’s birthday, Mother’s day, and deer hunting and fishing opening.  I have missed Tyler in the day, at night when I lay down, even in my dreams sometimes. I have reinacted every mistake and argument I had with him. I have  looked at pictures, pictures, and more pictures. I have hung onto and daydreamt about every happy memory I could think of. I have seen his smile float in my memory. I have heard his voice when he wasn’t there. I have closed my eyes and hugged myself and pretended it was him. I have talked to him, cried for him, cried for myself, cried for my family. I have talked about Tyler like he was still here. Through all of this I have discovered that I am human, imperfect, but in a lot of ways I feel like Samson fighting the giant Goliath. Grief can be a big shadowing menace that lurks and threatens to swallow you whole. Your gut instinct may be to curl into a ball and surrender. Mine was. Shut everyone out, shut myself up. If I am alone then no one can see me or hurt me anymore. The problem with being alone is it is lonely. So I chose to fight the giant. Some days that meant just going to work. Some days it was so much more - good memories, good times, laughing, smiling, a glimpse of the “before” life we used to have.  The giant is still there - he always will be. Grief isn’t something you “get over.” Now that it has been a year, we are not magically “cured” anymore than Tyler was. As I have mentioned before, it is not getting over loss, it is learning to live with it. Some days it hurts worse than others.  I imagine this is part of the “acceptance” we hear about. I do accept Tyler is gone, that we couldn’t have changed that. I accept that despite this, we must continue on here. I also accept that it is OK to still have happiness - that doesn’t lessen any part of Tyler’s life.

This last  year wasn’t all about sadness. We had many things that happened this past year that will be treasured memories in years to come. We got our little dog Dixie - much to Jay’s dismay, although for some reason now he is Dixie’s favorite person. Jay will tell you he doesn’t like her, but it is funny how I always find her sitting on his lap. We’ll keep that our little secret though.  We got to hang out with our Fiero buddies off and on all summer and I got my own Fiero in the fall. We had an awesome car show and party at our house in July. We got to go to Mexico in December. I celebrated the last birthday of my 30s in May - that wasn’t so much fun - but isn’t 40 the new 30? I guess we will see in a few months. We watched Carter play baseball and wrestle. This year wasn’t all bad. I have a quote on my email signature for work. It reads “It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see.”

I readily admit that I can be depressed, upset, angry, and generally feel like hitting something. When the helpless/hopeless feelings set in, this is a very human side effect. Things are never as “June Cleaver” as I aspire to be. Sometimes it plain old sucks to be around me.  I think the main cause of that is it is my knee jerk reflex to internalize the “real me.”  I get tired of talking about how bad I feel to my family and friends. I often feel like my timeframe of that has expired. I have a fierce independent streak 10 miles wide and to become a burden - whether emotional or physical - on someone else is not easy for me to do. That brings us to coping. How have I learned to “cope” this past year?  Someone in my position a year ago may be wondering that… how in the world do I handle this? Put your pants on one leg at a time, that’s how.  Sometime my feet get tangled up and my pants are on backwards, but by God those pants get put on every day.

We all develop our own methods of coping starting at a very young age and carry those methods and develop new ones as we grow older. I have some good coping habits and some bad ones. My initial way to deal with this as I mentioned was just shutting down. If I put on a smile and just pretend everything is fine, everyone will quit looking at me and wondering if I am going to fall apart. You can only hide from yourself for so long though before it starts to wear you out. Talking - to anyone - friends or family - is a good way to release that pent up steam. You know that crazy lady in sweatpants who hasn’t showered in 3 days that you run into while looking at canned soup in the Wal-mart who bumps your cart and ends up telling you her life story? Sometimes that’s me. At least I don’t follow anyone to their car or anything really strange, not yet anyway. The point is talking about it makes it less scary. I talk about Tyler because I can. I will never stop talking about him. If that makes anyone uncomfortable, I don’t care. I talk about him because he is still my son, I am still his mom, and talking about him makes me feel close to him. I remember very clearly the first time I was asked by a stranger how many kids I had shortly after Tyler’s death. I was just dumbfounded and I said “2.” This was only days after the funeral.  I felt horrible the instant it left my mouth, but I wasn’t prepared how that simple ordinary question that everyone asks would put me in a position of having to share my loss with someone I didn’t know. I will never make that mistake again. Ask me how many children I have. I have 3, one of them is waiting for me in heaven. “I’m so sorry to hear that” you might say as you are feeling very uncomfortable. I will reply, “Don’t be sorry. I am not sorry he is in heaven. Yes I wish I had more time with him here on earth and I miss him like crazy, but how can I be sorry he sits at the feet of Jesus right now? I know I will join him when this life of mine is over and I am glad of that.”

Other ways I have found to cope are keeping busy - idle hands and all. I love my job, which is a blessing all in itself. I have started to exercise regularly - as opposed to eating myself into oblivion. If you know me or follow facebook, you know I go to Zumba. OK, I am not coordinated and prone to unexplained falling episodes generally, but this single lifestyle change has been one of the best things I have done completely selfishly for me this past year. If you feel bad, just moving - doing something - makes a huge difference. Nothing usually deters me from going to my exercise class - not even blizzards. Jay drove me through an all out fierce Minnesota blizzard one night just to get me to the community center. Other “doing” things like my memorial garden this summer was so healing. I have started quilting again - which was a huge passion of mine prior to cancer. I had to decide again that it was OK to be happy. I had to ask myself, would Tyler want you to sit on the couch crying the rest of your life or would he say “get out and ride mom.” I think we all know what he would say.

Writing has been another way of coping. I have always expressed myself so much better with written words then speaking. I have put all my laundry out there to dry so to speak. I have said so many times to never put something out there in cyberspace that you wouldn’t want the whole world to read. I am proud of every caring bridge journal entry and every blog entry since that. I wouldn’t care if no one read anything - because in essence this has been therapy for me.  I keep hoping that somewhere, someday, my words might help someone else. I have started to put together all my journal entries in a form to maybe publish someday - but that is not as easy as one might think. If you didn’t know me, would what I have to say be of interest to you? That is the question of the day I guess.

Family is on the list of coping mechanisms of course.  I cannot tell you how many people comment on the “statistic” of divorce after a child death. I am sure people wonder about us… if I was you I would wonder. To say our marriage was strained during Tyler’s illness is an understatement.  I can only guess at the magnitude of helplessness Jay felt when Tyler was sick. Although I felt that too, I was doing the caregiver role so I didn’t have time to sit and think as much. After Tyler died, then it hit me like a ton of bricks. We have had our own wars between us - sometimes it was him angry at me and sometimes it was me angry at him. If you would have asked me a year ago if we would make it, I would have honestly said I don’t know. We have traveled a long road together. Marriage is hard in any case. Throw in some cancer and a loss of a child and strain doesn’t begin to describe what happens. I said a long time ago in a journal entry that cancer was like an atomic bomb going off in your family. Only after the smoke clears will you see what you have left. We have learned in the last year that what is left is us - we are here and we aren’t going anywhere. Jay has held me when I cried and I have held him when he has cried. We have talked to each other about Tyler, what happened, what hurts the most.  You can either push or pull - as long as the pulls outweigh the pushes things tend to work themselves out.  Cancer robbed us of our son - what we choose to do with the rest of our lives is not up to cancer.

So here we are - almost a year later. I have struggled, stumbled, fallen flat on my face, and gotten up to do it all over again.  I guess that is some sort of miracle all on its own. On February 14 at 7:45 pm I will be making my way down to the cemetery and walking through the snowdrifts to where Tyler’s body was laid to rest. I am going to release a yellow balloon and tell Tyler I love him and I miss him. I will probably cry. I am sure I will not be alone in this sadness. I know I will not be alone in the cemetery.

My request of the readers of this blog is to post your favorite Tyler story on here. I would like to be flooded with stories. Even if you did not know Tyler personally, maybe your favorite story you heard about him from me or what touched you most about his life. I want to “talk” about him. Let’s give him a cyber memorial and in this way give me a cyber hug. I always love to hear from Ty’s friends. They have a piece of Tyler that I don’t - as it should be.  These memories you share with me are like flowers… fill up my garden.

I will start. My most recent favorite memory during that last summer we had Tyler was our last camping trip. I was camping with Carter and Cassie by myself and Tyler showed up. We cooked pork roast on the campfire - and ended up eating the whole thing without saving any for Jay. We played yahtzee in the dark and laughed so hard I might have peed myself a little. It was the best camping trip I have ever had with my kids and it was only about 30 miles from our house. When I look at this picture I can hear Tyler laughing in my mind.

 My favorite memory of our time with cancer was the day Jay took Carter to Frazee open wrestling and Tyler and I watched a Cake Boss marathon - all day. It was just him and I hanging out. He snoozed and would wake up and then snooze some more. I laugh also when I remember his first day of Kindergarten. I was so worried he would get lost - because he HAD TO take the bus - that I wrote his name, teacher’s name, and room number on his lunch box. He came home and informed me in as matter of fact voice a 5-year-old can have that wasn’t cool and to not ever do that again.