The past two days have been spent doing unimaginable tasks. Ron and I went to the cemetery where Tyler will be buried and selected and purchased his plot. We met with the funeral home, chose a casket, and fed them information for the obituary.
For the slide show of Tyler during the services, we selected pictures we had on our computer and pulled photos to be scanned out of albums from his earlier years. We chose the outfit he will wear in his casket and brought it to the funeral home. We ordered the flowers for his casket. We met with our pastor to plan Tyler’s service. We asked people to be pall bearers. We cried on the phone, cried with each other, cried by ourselves, cried in public.
Coming back to the house after being away for two months has been unbelievably difficult. Every nook and cranny bears his presence in some way. His favorite cereal in the pantry. His coats hanging in the hall closet. His shampoo in the shower. His laundry in the basement. His medical supplies lining the linen closet shelves.
The closed door to his bedroom beckons me over and over, despite the raw pain I feel when I open the door and gaze at his birthday and Christmas presents, the new shirts I ordered online that he never even got to wear, his books, music, the cash and gift cards on his dresser he never got to spend.
For 15 years plus nine months of pregnancy, my life’s focus has been on being Tyler’s mother. For the past seven months, in addition to being his mom, I have been care manager and patient advocate for Tyler, spending more hours per day by his side than probably at any other time in his life.
Now, I am floundering without purpose, role or direction. On the one hand I am planning his funeral and burial; on the other hand none of it seems real to me yet. Thoughts of him are so natural and second nature to me that with each one, I feel the agony of his loss anew.
I get battered without warning with the knowledge that I won’t see him return to Chapelgate Academy or graduate from high school. I won’t shed tears as we drop him off for college or be proud when he lands his first job.
I won’t get to be close to his girlfriends and gain the joy of having a daughter-in-law. I won’t experience the satisfaction of watching her and their children reap the benefits of all I tried to instill in him through the years.
And I won’t again hear his voice or feel his arms wrapped around me in one of his warm and loving hugs.
And woven through all this tapestry of emotion is an underlying aching burden for each who loved and lost him, but especially for his teenaged friends.
With them in mind, I wanted once more to share the really long post I wrote back in November. I shared it again in February because I knew new folks had registered to his site on CaringBridge and hadn’t seen the post the first time. For the same reason, I want to share it again today.
Now that my loving baby boy is gone and all hope for his healing on earth is lost, I can re-read the post and affirm that I still believe each part of it. So for those of you who are newer to this site, here it is: