Three years ago this day, I woke up without any hint that our world was about to be shattered. It was the first day of tenth grade for Tyler. We had to be out of the house by 7:35 to go pick up Nick and head to school. I had a gazillion things on my mind. I was going to have a crazy day at work. Tyler hadn’t felt the greatest during the three day Labor Day weekend, but he seemed better this morning and glad to see all his friends. They had just spent 4 days together last week at their high school retreat in Virginia.
The day before, Labor Day, Tyler and I had sat at the computer together, researching possible careers for him. I was starting to feel a bit stressed about all the college planning meetings and decisions that would be on the calendar this year and next.
I dropped the boys off with grins on their faces. As usual, they’d kept me laughing throughout our 20 minute commute. Just like the past two school years of carpooling. I could do this; I could fall back into the busy school year routine. I headed to the office and got caught up in the big project we were working on. When I arrived home, I sought out Tyler to hear about his first day.
I found him in his room, lying across his twin bed (which I thought was getting ridiculously small for his 6’1” frame), sound asleep. I frowned in consternation. Tyler hadn’t napped since he was two. It drove me crazy sometimes, but the boy simply couldn’t fall asleep during the day. He certainly never slept after school. I gently woke him up. He said he felt fine, was just really tired all day.
Ron, Tyler and I ate dinner, and when Tyler finished his homework, we decided to watch a movie: Tyler Perry’s Diary of an Angry Black Woman. Tyler squeezed in between us on our queen size bed, our family’s gathering place for TV shows and movies. I simply cherished this cuddle time with my 14-year-old. A fleeting thought: enjoy this while you can; he’s not always going to be willing to snuggle with his mom and dad, and you’ve only got three years before he’s off to college.
Partway through the movie, around 9:15pm, Tyler turned to me and said, “Mom, I’m hot.” I felt his forehead and jumped back in alarm: he was burning up! We paused the movie while I grabbed a thermometer. When it read 104 degrees, I made an instant decision: we’re going to the ER. Something wasn’t right. Tyler had no cough or stuffy nose. He had seemed off the past few days – aches and pains that didn’t add up. A fever told me something was seriously wrong.
I resigned myself to a night in the ER, knowing my day at work tomorrow would be brutal. But since Tyler had a fever now, he’d have to miss school tomorrow anyway. I didn’t think this should wait until I could get an appointment with his pediatrician.
When we arrived at the ER to an empty waiting room, I thought, maybe we’ll get out of here at a reasonable time. I definitely got some odd looks from the staff. Why is this mom bringing her kid in at the first sign of a fever? I didn’t feel embarrassed. Let them think I had Munchausen’s for all I cared. I just knew something was wrong.
Tyler and I chatted normally as we waited, interrupted periodically as a doctor or nurse would enter the room to poke and prod and quickly exit. They gave him some pain medication that made him throw up and made him very loopy, which he found hilarious. I was emailing Ron with updates and quoting some of the funny things Tyler was saying while under the influence. As usual, the boy was cracking me up.
At one point the doctor came in to say that blood tests had revealed elevated white blood cells. She said it was good I had brought him in, because he clearly had some kind of infection. I breathed a sigh of relief. Good. They’ll put him on an antibiotic, and we caught it early.
Just before midnight, the doctor reentered the room. I sensed she had some news. She pulled up a chair. She looked directly at me, and her eyes looked oh, so kind. I knew it wasn’t good, but even then, I thought the worst case scenario was sepsis and maybe an admission to treat it.
As I heard the word Leukemia exit her mouth, the atmosphere around me instantly shifted, compressing into something heavy and oppressive. A thunderous buzzing filled my head. Her voice sounded tinny, faint through the loud roar.
My first coherent thought was, why did she deliver this news in front of Tyler? She should have taken me outside the room and let me inform my child. Stunned, I said nothing. She quickly explained that they had contacted Johns Hopkins, where he would be transferred, and in the meantime Hopkins wanted them to run an abdominal scan.
I knew I had to call Ron. My phone was almost dead. But first I had to talk to my son. I couldn’t lose it. I couldn’t. I had to stay calm. He looked at me and said, “It’s ok; I know where I’m going if I die.”
When I finally made the call I knew would devastate my husband, I saw that it was no longer September 6th, but minutes into September 7th.
And so ended the 6th of September, 2011. The last 23 hours and 55 minutes of our innocence. The 300 seconds that remained on the clock that day ushered in a future of fear and terror, faith and trust, hope and impossible grief. September 6, 2011, was the day before the rest of our lives began. September 6th is forever for me the marker of the before and after of my life.
That’s how I think about my life now: living in the after. I’m learning in the after. I’m loving in the after. I smile and laugh and hope and sometimes even dream and plan in the after. But it will still always be the after. And every September 6th I weep for the loss of the before.