Tonite I did something that I normally don’t do this time of year. I was the surprise guest at my best friend Christina’s Birthday Party.
The bday girl and I
Normally at this time of year I hole up at home and just hide. This time of year has been miserable for me for almost 8 years.
I prefer to stay home and hide in my little bubble. But being the surprise guest at her birthday party was more important, than hiding home in my depression bubble.
It felt good to go out, be with my camp friends who know me, they know my story, my pain, but they also know me. The me at camp is social and fun, and likes to be part of everything.
I decided I owed it to myself to put my sadness aside and celebrate Christina’s birthday. It was so worth it, even with the miserable weather, by the time I got into the restaurant I looked like a drowned rat.
There is not a day I don’t miss him.Before the monsoon hit!
I was not the only one though, we were all wringing out our jackets and sweaters.
I curled my hair..then it poured.
But I tell u all this to tell you that I had a great time. Putting my sadness and sorrow aside was so worth it. I can’t hide forever, even though there are days I want to. But I won’t lie to you, there are still days where getting out of bed and being social is too much of a chore. I still live by the mantra “put one foot in front of the other, and soon u will look back and realize you have climbed a mountain.” The mountain will be twisty and steep, full of potholes and rocks. But you still have climbed the mountain.
This past weekend I went to my 40th High School Reunion. Anyone from HVRHS who is reading this would be able to tell u that current Tammie and 1980’s Tammie are 2 different people.
In High School I was shy, didn’t say much, and to say that I wasn’t in the “in crowd “ would be a vast under statement. But people change when you’re 40 yrs out of High School. The petty clique bull shit has for the most part has vanished.
We all talk about our kids, and grandkids. What they are doing, where they live, etc. Granted my class only had 121 students in it, and there was less than 25 people at the reunion. Phone numbers were exchanged, pictures were taken, drinks were bought, and all in all everyone had a good time.
Of course everyone told me they were so sorry about Connor, and asked how I was. The truth is that Saturday was a good night, I laughed and talked and hugged. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t tears shed on the way home. Because there absolutely was. They started as just little tears, but by the time they were over, it was a full on ugly cry.
The truth is no matter how much time has passed, talking about him makes me cry. But at the same time the happy memories make me smile. So with that in mind I cherish those happy moments and try not to dwell on the sad ones.
It doesn’t always work, and sometimes the tears just roll down my cheeks, and stopping is futile.
There is no map for navigating grief, it isn’t a linear progression. It is all tied up like a frustrating ball of yarn. Good days, bad days and days that having to get out of bed is just too hard. I take my prescribed anti depressants and anti anxiety meds. Sometimes it works, and then sometimes I need time with my besties.
When Connor first died I wud go out in the woods behind the house and just scream into the void, I also threw plates there too. So in the next century when someone excavates my woods. They are going to wonder why there are busted plates that are not a complete set of anything.
Almost 8 years later, I don’t throw plates, but I still have ugly cry days. They aren’t as frequent as they used to be. But I don’t ever expect that I will return to the happy go lucky mom I was 8 years ago. Like the High School Tammie, that happy go lucky mom doesn’t exist anymore.
But the new Tammie has learned that being happy is ok, I don’t need to be unhappy everyday. Connor would be PISSED at me if he knew that I was mourning and miserable all day.
This has been an up and down few weeks, between me being brave enough to go to Connor’s grave on my own, realizing that Steve Keyes my amazing boss/friend has been gone 4 years and the knowledge that thru all of this somehow Kyle managed to turn 27. I’m not sure how that happened. I blinked, and he was 5, then again and he graduated from elementary school, another blink and he was a tech graduate with a whole adult life of his own. It’s crazy how those things happen.
Steve Keyes was a force of nature all on his own. In the 9 years I worked for S Keyes Electric, Inc. I was in 6 locations. It got so we could pack my office like a Tetris game in less than an hour, then I would stand and direct as to where I wanted the furniture. The guys wud place the big stuff, and I wud tweak after they left. My true favorite office was the one in Millers in the rental property with the piano that was his pride n joy. That piano followed me to the space that used to be the liquor store in Whately and then to our final space at 13 State Rd in Whately. I used it as filing and organization space. What else do you use a baby grand piano for in an office?
I’m not sure there was a much better boss than Steve, he came and sat with me in the hospital when Connor was in Baystate PICU, he had my coworker Rachel Jackson bring me a care package in the form of a basket that weighed more than she did. I dragged the blanket around the hospital like Linus for the 12 days I was there. He missed a Patriots playoff game to be one of Connor’s pallbearers, and started our day with a fireball toast. Saying we all needed it , and he was right. He was the “Captain” of the Keyes Electric Dodgeball Team when a Dodgeball Tournament was held as a fundraiser after Connor died. They didn’t win, but they sure had a good time.
A group of us from S Keyes Electric went to see Tom Petty and Joe Walsh at the Xfinity Center in Hartford . To this day the song “Life’s Been Good” reduces me to tears, because that was Steve and I. He broke it and I fixed it.
There were 15 of us in a 15 passenger van, with 8 coolers, 6 blankets and 10 chairs. It forever became known as the “S KEYES ELECTRIC TRAVELING SHIT SHOW”. As we got off the 91 exit for Xfinity Steve announced, “I gotta pee, open the door Mark, I gotta pee.” My husband opened the sliding van door. Steve hopped out, traffic began to move, so he was walking and peeing as the van was traveling down the exit ramp. I can’t make this shit up. We finally found a place to park the van, and all dispersed, with instructions of where we were gonna sit. As expected we lost Steve in the first 20 minutes, he wouldn’t answer his phone. Rachel and I just looked at each-other and rolled our eyes. Knowing st least he didn’t have the keys and he would show up eventually. He did, with his knees all bloodied and banged up. He tried to jump over a jersey barrier and missed. He was a walking train wreck, always, but you took him good, bad and ugly because that was who he was.
The next morning I had to take him to the Greenfield Court House so he could turn himself in for the infraction from the day before. That’s when I knew he was more than my boss. I cried all the way home from the courthouse. I knew where the cash was if I needed to bail him out, but he called me 2 hrs later to come get him, they let him out ROR. That was life with Steve.
He worked hard, and he played hard too. He loved hard, would do anything for the people that he loved, and was known to pick up strays, people more than animals. He was always finding things to do for employees that weren’t electricians, but needed jobs. They mowed lawns, painted, moved things, organized vans and the shop. He was a giver in the true sense of the word. The world needs more people like him, but I guess the heavens needed him more.
As I’m sure all of you know, Connor was not the young man that bestowed the title of Mom on me. That honor belongs to Kyle S. Powers, the young man that came screaming into this world on 1/1/97. Yes you read that right, I have a New Years Baby, a 21 days early New Years Baby.
I don’t care how old you are when you have your first child. You figure things out together, sleeping in car seats, swings, co-sleeping, you nap when they do. Cutting their fingernails (or biting them off as I did), which bottles do they like, which formula works, and which causes projectile vomiting.
I was the woman who never thought I wanted children, and if I had them, I sure was not going to stay home with them. Kyle changed all that, I went back to work, but lost my daycare when he was 9 months old. So in the blink of an eye I became a Stay at Home Mom, and loved it.
I relished every milestone, sleeping through the night, crawling, first steps, walking, then running, then first words, then he was unstoppable. We built block towers together, played with matchbox cars, watched Barney Videos more times than I have fingers and toes to count. I loved being a mom, Kyle got 3 years of undivided attention before Connor joined the show and he became a big brother.
I don’t know about Kyle but I wouldn’t change those 3 years for anything. Even with all the sleepless nights, when he was up screaming with an ear infection, or the fact that his favorite way to sleep was in his battery operated swing in our bedroom. Many nights after he woke up to eat he went back to sleep, between us, sleeping on my right arm. Who needs feeling in their fingers anyway?
I read all the parenting books (this was 1997 pre internet). No blankets, they might suffocate, sleep them on their side with wedges, footed pajama sleepers to keep them toasty. But no one told me I had the anomaly of children. Kyle HATED to be hot, I didn’t know that at the time I just thought he was being a pint sized ASSHOLE. He took his footed pj’s off so I safety pinned the zipper closed. Houdini figured out how to circumvent that, I put them on backwards, he figured that out too. I did backwards and safety pin and he still escaped.
Finally by then he could talk. “No pj’s too hot mommy!! So my furnace of a child slept in a t shirt onesie in the middle of winter, and was just as happy as could be!! He hated to be hot so much he preferred you give him his bottle and prop him on a pillow on the floor, you holding him was too much body heat, it was his own personal version of hell!!!
I always knew he would do something that had to do with motors/wheels/machinery. I am convinced his first words were neither Mom Nor dad, but “Vroom Vroom Go”. He is now a heavy machinery operator and loves it.
I know generally this blog is all about the loss of Connor, but this time I am celebrating Kyle. My firstborn, the young man that I grew up raising, we figured things out together, what worked, what didn’t. From him driving matchbox cars, to him driving my car, then to his own cars, and now to operating heavy machinery. You make me proud every day Kyle, proud to be your mom, and proud that you are the young man who bestowed that title on me!!
You know it has been a long time since you have been to the cemetery. When it takes you 3 trips around to find Connor’s stone. I finally found it. I’m sure the people walking in the cemetery were wondering what that crazy woman in the blue SUV was doing. Something about the snow just disoriented me. Or it’s just easier, and honestly more truthful to say. “I don’t go there often, it causes a huge crying jag, and the irrational desire to get on my knees and dig the plot up.
To prove to me and everyone else he really isn’t in there. That this is just a bad dream, that I somehow can’t wake up from. I say irrational because I know it is, and it is not something that I would ever do. But seeing that beautiful piece of shiny black granite with his name and the engraved baseball on it makes it real every time.
Not that it isn’t real, because it is. There are no half tied Chippewa boots by my front door, dirty laundry in front of the laundry chute. I’m not missing half of my utensils that have migrated to his room, and my refrigerator stays fairly full, and no one puts a gallon of milk back in there with a tablespoon in the bottom of it. Rather than be the one that throws it away.
As I sat and watched it snow today, I knew that if he was still here, he wud have gotten out of work, grabbed those twin tips, his boots and helmet and headed to the mountain. He was an incredible skier, he had no fear, which only made him better. He could traverse the mountain if he wanted to, but why would you. He would rather come down at breakneck speed, or ski under the lifts, or on closed trails.
There are so many things I miss, little things, like his inability to get his clothes DOWN the laundry chute, when it was right outside his bedroom door. The fact that buying jeans for the boy was a project. With a 28” waist and 32” long legs he was an anomaly. His game face, the one that he wore every time he stepped on that field. How he took the game of baseball so seriously, and got so frustrated when some of his teammates did not. How he loved you with everything he had, he was a hopeless romantic, and a good ole boy all wrapped into one package.
My Connor, who will forever be 17, as I watch all his friends age, get married, have kids, move away. In my mind he is off somewhere doing those things. But in reality he stopped aging 11/17/17, months shy of his 18th birthday. That is a reality that is hard to swallow, like a bitter pill that gets stuck without enough water to wash it down. There will never be enough water to wash this one down…NEVER.
Today is the culmination of 11 shitty days. Today, 6 years ago we made the heartbreaking decision to turn the machines off that we’re sustaining Connor’s life. There was no brain activity, and he would never be Connor again. I remember sitting by his bed and holding his hand, for hours. Crying and begging him to open his eyes, so I could see his beautiful blue eyes one more time. But it never happened.
But today is also the day that another blue eyed whirling dervish came into our lives. Today is Jezebel’s “Gotcha Day”, 3 years ago we drove to Maine, with Jordan in tow to pick up the furry hellion. She makes me smile and usually laugh on a daily basis.
Last night before I fell asleep, I buried my head in Mark’s chest and sobbed, big ugly tears. “Why our baby?” I kept asking. It is the eternal unanswerable question every grieving parent deals with. I have been told, “it was his time”, “he is in a better place“, “time heals all wounds.”
I want to call BULLSHIT on any of those reasons. He was 17, it was too early, he isn’t in a better place! A better place would be here on earth. And TIME ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT heal all wounds. It may dull the pain, but it is always there.
Jordan always says this is something Connor would do!!🐷
I am learning to cry when I need to, not bottle up the grief, to let people who offer to help, HELP. Even with what I have learned, there is no substitute for Connor being earthbound, I miss him every day!
If I have the emotional strength I may go through the Facebook Memories today. But if not that’s ok too. What I will do is go sit in Jordan’s salon chair, and let her make me beautiful today. There will be tears and laughter and most of all LOVE, because nothing can take that away.
Faith, hope, and love are some good things He gave us And the greatest is love
While at camp today someone commented on my Connor/Baseball tattoo, and wanted the story on it. I opened my mouth to speak, and with the words came tears. I realize that I have been bottling it up for months.
Once the tears start it is hard to get them to stop, and along with them comes the hard reality. The reality that no matter how much I cry and whine about it. HE IS NEVER COMING BACK.
I have an awful habit of not letting people in, I don’t want to burden others with my grief. But as I stood there explaining the story, with the big fat ugly tears running down my face. I realized that not sharing it makes the pain fester
There will never be a day in the future that I won’t miss him, and wish that things were different. It is unnatural to bury a child. There name and dates should never be on a headstone before yours. No matter how pretty the headstone is.
As I’m typing this, sitting in a comfy chair at the pavilion. I’m hoping that too many people can’t hear me sniffle, or the tears running down my face. Unlike earlier today they aren’t big ugly fat tears. But just tiny rivulets of pain streaming down my face.
Sometimes letting people in, and sharing my pain and grief with them isn’t such a bad thing. It temporally unburdens my heart, and makes me realize that I’m not alone. Now if I wasn’t so stubborn and did it more often, maybe the scabs on my heart wud get a chance to form. This is a hurt that will never heal, but maybe I cud get it to abate a little.
Since the only way this ankle is ever going to heal is if I stay off of it. So I have been binging anything I can find. Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, Emily in Paris, FBI, Cold Case Files and my absolute favorite Law & Order, SVU. The Dun Dun sound will always fix me to my seat, regardless of whether I have seen the episode or not.
I am now on Season 19, and the last episode really hit home. It was about a Father who kidnapped his infant son, because his Mother wanted to turn off the machines and he did not.
Just over 5 years ago Mark and I were faced with that same horrendous decision. We were united in whatever the final decision was. But that didn’t make it any easier. The knowledge that we were going to have to turn off the ventilator, was unbearable.
I remember having a discussion with the Dr. that was in charge of the PICU, he said to me. “I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you that the son that you know and love isn’t there anymore. His brain is no longer functioning, he isn’t breathing on his own, and his movements aren’t purposeful. If we hook him up to permanent machines, you lose the choice to unplug them, that becomes the State’s decision.”
As much as I never wanted to make that decision, it was a decision that Mark and I were able to make amongst us and our family. The decision was made, to sit with him that last day, hold his hand, talk to him, laugh, cry and beg him to open those beautiful blue eyes of his. The opening of his eyes never happened, but I will hold the memories of that last day in my heart forever.
That episode of Law & Order reduced me to blubbering tears. As much as I love that show, that episode will be one that I can walk away from. It won’t rivet me to my chair.
This has been a rough month. This ankle break has given me time, time to think and reflect about the last 5+ years. First I lost Connor, then Steve, then the shuttering of Keyes Electric, then the accident that sent me flying through the air. Flipped four times after being rear ended, walked away bruised and bumped with a severe concussion. Then the klutz that I am, fell in the garage and ended up like this.
When the boys were little, the thought of spending a week in bed being waited on was an unattainable dream. To just lay there, read, sleep, watch tv (all the things on the ID channel that I love,) Well all those things have happened, Mark has been on meal detail since this has happened. I have only gotten up to go to the bathroom, get a shower in and in the last week work from my dining room table and sometimes move to sit in the living room.
I am BORED, I have read 10 books, my Apple Watch says that I have a serious sleep credit, I have streamed everything I can find that I might like. But one thing hasn’t changed. I miss Connor, and all this “leisure” time has given me time to think about it.
There will not be a day, until I am out in the ground next to him that I won’t miss him. When I’m watching Law & Order:SVU I miss him laughing at the “heinous” crime intro and calling an aneous crime. Saying “mom is watching weird murder crap again.”
When I flip through all my streaming services I come across things he would be watching, FORGED IN FIRE, JACKASS, DEADLIEST CATCH, STREET OUTLAWS, THE ENTIRE FAST & FURIOUS SERIES, & MOONSHINERS. They make me smile, and there are always some tears shed. In my head I can hear his commentary, and him on the phone with Jordan.
I swear sometimes I hear his laughter from from his bedroom. I know it isn’t real (but that doesn’t mean I haven’t opened the door to check.) But all I find are the memories of him, his Hard Hat from Tech, signed by his classmates, the Eversource Hard Hat that they dropped off the day of the funeral. The pictures that he took of him and Jordan. His ski and baseball gear, and all the crap that a teen boy collects.
People have told me that I need to clean out his room, that keeping it as a shrine isn’t healthy. But in my mind, once I clear it out, that means he is NEVER coming back. I know in my head he is never coming back, but my heart just can’t get there yet. I’m not sure if it ever will.
Today was my first full day without my post surgical splint. I am the proud owner of a “Walking Boot”. A bit of a misnomer, because I still can’t walk on my left leg. I am to remain Non Weight Bearing at least until my next follow up in March.
I was ecstatic when the nurse cut my post surgical splint off yesterday. The first thing I did was reach down and scratch all the dead, dry crusty skin off of my calf. It felt fantastic, to not have the splint on, and to let the air touch my leg.
Today I worked from home, sitting at my dining room table, with my foot propped up, and the boot mostly off. By abt 1:30 the pain was on its way back, and by 3;00 the swelling was bad enough that wiggling my toes was a chore.
As soon as I logged out, I took my trusty knee scooter and trucked my ass to bed. Laid down and elevation and ice commenced. After being prone with an elevated foot for 6+ hrs. The swelling has reduced, the pain is subsiding and I can freely wiggle my toes.
The human body is an amazing thing, if we are willing to listen to it. When I told my mom I was swollen today, because I am just like dad and didn’t take it easy. She rolled her eyes at me via text, and told me to try and be a little more like her for a few days.
I will try mom, but unfortunately us Whalen’s are a stubborn bunch. But tomorrow will be ice and elevation and streaming of TV shows. Hopefully if I behave it won’t be swollen like The Goodyear Blimp tomorrow .🫰
A Hole in My Heart 