Our Friend Tyler

(This post is about 3 weeks late but something I still wanted to share).....

This past week was a very hard week as we (our playgroup) lost a friend that was the same age as Maise. It was horribly difficult. We felt very close to this boy’s story as we have been following his illness since they discovered it at just 4 months old. His name was Tyler, born to a woman named Stephanie that I met when we were both pregnant with Tyler and Maise.

I was not surprised when many members from our mom group made efforts to go to say goodbye in person. I was supposed to be one of them, unfortunately, last minute, I was unable to join my friends.

During Stephanies process she allowed us to be her support. She lived online while being there for Tyler. I think it was so brave of her to be willing to share her story and I hope she gained something wonderful from the people that joined to support her and be there to listen.

I had a dream about Tyler last night. He was happy! He was playing cars and running around with other kids. He was a boy a little boy playing and laughing with other kids. It was like this image of heaven and all these beautiful children together was exactly where he was supposed to be. In my dream he ran to a table with ramps for his cars, when he got to the table all the kids ran up to him to play with him like they knew each other forever, patting him on the back like he just won the big game.

This experience has been so life changing. During this process I have thought more about God than I have in a long time. I have evaluated my scheduling and time I spend with my own family, I have learned how wonderful peoples hearts are and how big their hearts could be. I have learned what real friendship is like and what strenghth really is.

I think Tyler was pretty amazing and we who got to know him are all better off because of it. I want to tell Stephanie that she is pretty amazing also. In all the pictures and videos of Tyler  in and out of the hospital, sometimes even in tubes or while wearing a protective mask…he was smiling, giggling, and happy he was truly the happiest kid. I look at photos of my own kids and must admit not all of them are smiling. Ha, sometimes I took the bad ones on purpose! But I don’t remember the bad ones of Tyler. They were all pretty happy and I think Stephanie must be a pretty amazing mom to be able to do that.

Thank you Stephanie for bringing Tyler into this world!