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.