At 7:00 am I got up to start the children’s
lunches for school but went downstairs to get the boys up first, knowing that
Jake would soon get up and wake Angeline up before he headed to the
office. I walked into Tyler’s room,
switched on the light, said good morning and told him to wake up. I left Tyler's room and walked to the room right
beside to wake up Roderick. As I opened
the door there was a hockey stick blocking the door.
“Why do you have a stick
blocking the door?” I said.
I removed it so I could open the door and
walk in. I saw Roderick stretched out on
the floor, “why is he sleeping on the floor? Is he hot?” I thought as my gaze
made it around the door to where his head was.
When I saw his face, I knew instantly something was wrong. My thought was “this kid is sick, he probably
got out of bed to go for help and fell.
Is he still alive?”
I knelt quickly to feel his body and check
what was wrong. This is where I want to
stop and not continue the story. I have
a hard time admitting that it was us, Roderick’s own parents, who thought he
had committed suicide when he was such a happy son full of life and energy and
as his friends keep saying, “he lived life to the fullest”. Roderick did not live life from the sidelines
as so many people do; he jumped in and lived it himself. But I cannot change what happened and this is
the story.
As I knelt down my eyes landed on the gun
beside Roderick’s body with the barrel pressing into his throat, a puddle of
blood under his head, and blood sprayed against the wall. That’s when it hit me, “my son shot himself”. How is that possible? What kind of a
horrible hell was he living in and how could I have no idea. He seemed so happy and was really starting to
make mature choices planning for his future.
I got up, turned around and let out a
scream, which sent my husband running into the basement from his place still on
the couch.
As I walked out of Roderick’s room I met
Jake.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I said, “he’s gone”.
He did not understand.
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| Angeline took this picture not long before the accident, Roderick is sitting at the same spot wearing the same clothes he did that last night when we said good night to him. |
He still had no idea what my scream had been
about but when I said “Roderick” he walked into Roderick’s room to check.
He yelled “no, no this isn’t possible, what
have we done? This isn’t possible”.
Tyler came out of his room to see what was
going on. We told him Roderick is gone but it was to much for him to believe, we told him that Roderick had shot himself, he still didn't seem to get it finally he took off walking into
Roderick’s room as if to check for himself what was going on but stopped short
when he saw the blood underneath the door and turned around.
"Why would he do that?" he asked.
"We don't know" we answered, "Did he say anything to you?"
"No"
"Why would he do that?" he asked.
"We don't know" we answered, "Did he say anything to you?"
"No"
“I heard the gunshot,” Tyler told us later.
“You did?”
“Yes, I heard a bang and called ‘Roderick
are you ok’ but everything was quiet so I thought something must have fallen,”
Tyler said.
I walked back into that room one more time
to make sure it was true and prayed, “God, I may never know what exactly
happened in this room this night but I’m going to need some answers”. God gave me peace that we would find answers
and we would be comforted.
Jake called 911 and told the lady on the
line “my son committed suicide”.
In about 10 minutes the ambulance arrived
followed in a few minutes by the police.
We showed them downstairs into Roderick’s room.
The ambulance driver was back in just a few
minutes and looked at us. Jake simply said,
“he’s gone” she nodded and said, “I’m sorry” and soon left.
The police officers were incredibly
sensitive. After looking at the
situation downstairs they had to question everyone in the house.
They asked questions like “Did Roderick have
addictions?”
“No,” in fact he had strong convictions
against smoking, drinking or drugs.
“What was his Mark on his report card?”
“In the seventies.”
“That’s a good Mark.”
I wasn’t sure that was so good but it was
obvious the police were impressed, that was not the kind of mark they would see
in suicides.
“I’m a police officer, I know a gun like
this is loud, you didn’t hear it?” the officer asked.
“No, we sleep on the second level above the
car garage but Tyler did” I answered.
Roderick’s room is in the total opposite end
of the house in the basement but still that is a question we have too, how come
did we not hear it, both me and Jake weren’t sleeping too well that night due
to having so much coffee at a family gathering the day before. It was obvious that Roderick’s body had been
lifeless for quite some time.
After questioning they walked back into
Roderick’s room and one of them soon came back up.
“We believe it was an accident,” he said.
Such a flood of relief went over us, but then
reality struck once again. Roderick is
still gone.
By this time family had started arriving and
the news spread like wild fire. Up until
this point it had been said that Roderick had committed suicide.
Now I was beginning to feel guilty. Why did we even think such a thing, Roderick
was such a happy kid and had never dealt with depression.
Our Youth Pastor, Pastor Jono also arrived
around this time. We didn’t even have to
call him, he heard the news and came right over. He was such a comfort, when he got here he
took over, talked to the police, arranged a cleaner for us, arranged a meeting
with the funeral director and of course comforted and prayed with us. His confidence in it having to have been an
accident was such a support during that time of doubt. He said, “Suicides always have
symptoms”.
Our church was incredible in loving and
supporting us; also they took care of the whole service, food and everything. They did it all for us. We always knew we belonged to a great church
but did we ever feel it now.
Before the Police left, they talked to us
one more time and wanted to confirm again that it seemed to have been a tragic
accident. They had originally thought
the shot had gone into his throat but it had actually gone into his left eye. The reason for this mistake was Roderick's body lay with his right arm up and the outside of his hand right over his left eye so we could not see the wound.
I should confirm here that Roderick had
taken a gun safety course and had a firearm license.
All we can do is speculate what could have
happened. So many times Jake has stood
in that room and looked it over and over trying to figure out what
happened. It’s quite obvious that he
must have looked into the barrel, also by the way Roderick’s body lay, where
the gun was and where his phone lay, he must have had the gun in his left hand
and his phone in his right hand. We know
the gun had issues with jamming. Could
he not sleep (which was common for him) and did he decide to get up and see if
he could fix the gun? He had done this once before and taken the gun completely apart, Jake had to help him put it back together later.
Later we learned that two of
his friends had texted with him until late that night, his last text was sent
at 12:15. Roderick had been his normal
self. Once we had access to his phone
the texts confirmed that it was exactly as his friends said.
I could share a lot of things about Tyler starting when he was very young but let me just start by saying that Tyler struggled with low self esteem. After Roderick went to heaven Tyler was very sensitive and wanted to do stuff with us. I think he realized how precious family is. But then he sunk into this sadness, he rarely smiled and didn’t say much other then what he needed to say in everyday life. He always had his group of friends though, he never felt that he had no friends, but he spent a lot of time by himself doing his own thing.
December 21 started like any other Thursday morning. I got up a bit later then usual close to 6:30 and made a pot of coffee. I was going to spend some time for devotions but after a little bit decided to go switch on Tyler’s light so he could wake up slowly. I usually wake the kids up at 7 but Tyler had recently asked to wake him up a bit earlier, so he had a little extra time to get ready. I walked downstairs and noticed that all the lights had been left on, which was strange. Then I glanced over at Tyler’s bedroom and saw the door was open and the lights were on so he must have gone to shower already. I glanced over to the washroom and saw the door was open, he wasn’t in the shower, then I went to check out his room. It was empty, now my heart was starting to pound, I felt like another nightmare was beginning, the only problem, I couldn’t wake up from it, I was already fully awake.
In the spring of 2017, Tyler started coming out of his shell. Wanting to have friends over, building a tree house with dad etc. That summer he did a lot of biking, His friend and he would meet halfway and bike to either one of their houses and hang out. This is what I posted not long before Tyler passed away and I quote “One day Tyler comes to Jake and me and out of the blue says, “we should get a pool”. He added that he wanted to start having friends over more often and it would be nice to have a pool. That same day Angeline comes and says the same thing without knowing that Tyler had brought it up. Not to long after that Tyler said we should get a tree house built, that should be our project for the summer, so as a family we started dreaming about it. We discussed whether it would be wise to build a pool unto this yard because it doesn’t raise the value of the property. We bought an old house six years ago and renovated it but it hadn’t ever really been our intention to make this a long-term home, this was just what we could afford at that time. So we started looking for a house and enjoyed dreaming as a family again. We bought a house in September. This will stretch us financially and even though we are big on financial freedom I think it will be good for us to work hard to get ahead financially. We needed a kick in the butt to say get up, work hard, make it work, start dreaming again, and have a reason to plan. We still struggle with dreaming and planning many times but we are excited about moving in February and it is great to dream again.” I feel like Tyler was the one who got us dreaming again.
I was looking forward to the school year and so was he, I was sure things would be different now but only a week or two into the school year I could sense a heaviness on him and I sensed it wasn’t going as well as he had hoped. I started to pray earnestly for him.
Not long after that he shared with me that he thought he had social anxiety, he had researched it online and there was medication he could get for that. I didn’t think he needed medication, I thought he just needed to realize that it wasn’t easy to socialize after having withdrawn himself for so long but I also thought this would be an opportunity to get him into counseling and then maybe he would be able to open up and talk about his brother’s death as well.
The family doctor agreed with me and so he started counseling. At this time, I started setting aside one day a week to fast and pray for him. Every time I took him to counseling, I prayed that God would do a miracle and that Tyler would see he could beat this without medication. Looking back now I’m not even sure why that was so important to me. After only a few sessions the counselor suggested using a bit of medication and asked how I felt about it. I said I wanted to do what he thought was best. I would have liked to do it without medication. He asked Tyler if we could try to go without it a couple more weeks. Tyler agreed.
Two weeks later, still hoping God would do that miracle, I asked him if he still felt he needed medication. He looked at me and then looked down and said, “I’m good with what you want mom” but he had the most defeated look on his face as if there was no help for him and I decided at that moment that I would agree to medication. I said “God, I prayed for a miracle and it didn’t happen so now I go forward believing that medication is your plan”.
On December 11, he had his last appointment with the counselor. He was doing so well; he had already gone to a movie with a group of friends including some he hadn’t hung out with before and was planning a Christmas party with his friends that Friday where they wanted to decorate gingerbread houses and other activities. The counselor agreed that he was doing so well he didn’t need another appointment.
That Thursday he seemed down, he had to postpone the Christmas party because there were too many of his friends that couldn’t make it, that wouldn’t usually bother him though, and he said it didn’t. That same week he also said he would like to start taking his medication in the evening because he felt like it took until lunch before it worked. I was surprised because I thought he was doing so well but the doctor had said it didn’t matter if he took it in the morning or evening, so I didn’t really care. I started giving it to him just before bed. The following day he came home from school looking unusually tired. I asked him what was wrong, he said he was fine.
He lay down on the couch and fell asleep. This happened three days in a row and then he said he wanted to go back to taking his medication in the morning, this isn't working, he said: so we did. Whether his tiredness was due to the medication or not I don’t know.
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| Tyler fell asleep doing homework, this was one of the three days he came home so tired |
After that he seemed more himself although I could tell he wasn’t back to where he had been. On Tuesday he asked to stay after school to watch the drama class practice I said he could but then he’d have to come to Angeline’s hockey game because I didn’t have time to drive him home in between. He was fine with that. He watched Angeline’s game, Angeline scored in that game, it was special that Tyler got to watch her score a goal. He didn’t come to her games much. When we got home Angeline excitedly showed off the Christmas sweater, she had gotten for the Christmas event the following day at school. Tyler said he wanted one too. Angeline said they got all four of us one. He liked one of them and I thought it would look so great with his olive pants. I was so excited. We had our Tyler back. It was a long time since he’d been excited to dress up for something. The next morning, he didn’t come up dressed for the event though, I could tell the excitement of the night before was gone but I didn’t make a big deal of it.
After school when Tyler got into the car, I asked him how the Christmas event had been he said good. Then he asked if we could go pick up helium for the Christmas Party. He said he was planning to have the party on the 28th or 29th now. I asked, “right now?” He said yea. I didn’t mind, we bought helium before and I was impressed that he wanted to go shopping with Angeline and me. He’d usually just want me to pick stuff up for him. The three of us went to the party store to buy the helium and went home.
When we got home, he had a big plate of food. Jake, Angeline and I watched Survivor downstairs while he was on the computer in the room beside us, what he was doing I don’t know but when we went upstairs, he soon came up with his blanket. That was strange. I asked him what he wanted with his blanket it was really time for bed. He said he wanted to sleep upstairs this night, I asked what he had said but then he said, “I’m cold downstairs I just want to lay down on the couch and warm up then I’ll go to bed”. I puzzled a bit over the fact that he changed his answer and what he had originally meant. Jake asked him if he wasn’t feeling well, if he should make him a citron. He said he was fine. I made him a mint tea and brought it to him, I often did that for him before bed and asked him again if he wasn’t feeling well and if he wanted an Advil. He said again he was fine he would just warm up and then go to bed downstairs. Jake and I said good night and went to bed.
Not long after that we heard Tina (our niece who lived with us) come in, she had worked a late shift. Then we heard Tyler get up and I heard him go to the broom closet and open some drawers in the cabinet then went downstairs and I fell asleep. Tina later told us when she came in, he had seemed completely relaxed on the couch and had said hi.
She went downstairs and got ready to shower when she came out of her room Tyler and her had both been on the way into the bathroom and Tyler had said she could use it first. After she was done she heard Tyler go in and then go back to his room, she had seen that the light in his room was still on so she knew he hadn’t gone to bed. She got ready for bed when she heard what sounded like loud breathing. She got up and put her ear to her door to listen but then had concluded that he must have been very tired and fallen asleep with the lights on and was now snoring. This was around 11:30.
Since Roderick’s passing if anything isn’t quite normal in the morning, we always had to really be careful that we didn’t panic right away so I told myself, he’s going to be OK, he can’t just disappear. I glanced over at his computer room, which used to be Roderick’s bedroom and saw the lights were on, but the door was closed, so he must be in that room. I walked over to the door and the door was locked, this was strange, Tyler never locks his doors. I called him but he didn’t answer. I figured he must have fallen asleep, so I called louder. I went back upstairs to get something to unlock the door knowing that was not the easiest door to unlock. I debated if I should tell Jake, but I thought “no reason to panic, he must have fallen asleep in his computer room, he wasn’t the easiest kid to wake up.
I went back downstairs to try and unlock the door but couldn’t seem to do it. I banged on the door louder and more desperate by now pleading, “Please Tyler answer me, I need to know that you’re OK”. No answer. I went back up to find something else to unlock the door, while I was searching Jake finally made his way downstairs and he noted right away from my face that something was wrong. I told him “Tyler is in his computer room and the door is locked”.
Jake walked straight downstairs while I continued to look for something to unlock the door. I was interrupted by a scream from Jake “No! No! not again”. I knew what that meant. The door was unlocked so I guess my first attempt worked I just didn’t realize it, but Jake said he had been ready to break down the door if need be.
I ran downstairs and found Tyler lying on the floor fully dressed, his head on a bean back and a helium tank beside him. When I saw his face, I knew he was gone, his spirit had left his body. Jake found him there with a garbage bag over his head and a hose from the helium tank into the bag. Of course, Jake’s instinctive reaction was to jerk the bag off to see if Tyler was okay. I was only barely downstairs, when I heard my daughter calling from the main floor “What happened?” Jake’s scream woke her up. I ran back up to her as quickly as I could. Our niece Tina lived with us and also came out of her room to see what was going on.
I told Angeline what happened, and we went into the living room. Jake came back up too.
Angeline said, “this can’t be true, are you sure, did you call him?’
I went back downstairs, and Jake and Angeline followed me. I called “Tyler come; Tyler come back” “God can you bring him back?” I believe Jake called him yet too.
Even though I had no idea that Tyler was suicidal with the realization that he had obviously been hurting far more then I had ever known came also this peace that he was now free and at peace.
That first night we were at my sister’s house and Jake and I kind of just lay in bed and tried to rest, we would doze off every so often. Once when Jake dozed off, he had this labored breathing and I woke him up thinking he had a nightmare. He said, “I had a beautiful dream’ and told me about it. He dreamed that Tyler had come back to life and wanted to celebrate with his friends that he was alive. I loved it when Jake had these beautiful dreams. Twice he had beautiful dreams about Roderick and that was always a precious gift from God. To think the very first night God gave him a dream even though he was barely sleeping at all was very comforting and truly could only be from a very caring, loving God. I hadn’t had dreams like that, I felt that was okay because we each had our own ways of receiving comfort and obviously God knew that Jake was the one who needed it.
Later that night though, I woke up with a dream. In my dream Tyler got into the back of the car, I was in the driver seat and I turned my head to look at him. He asked me to drop him off at Teo’s house because his friends were together there. We both knew that he had died and so I told him that he knew I couldn’t do that. He said “I know” then I said look at me and he looked at me for several long moments and I woke up. I told Jake my dream. Later I found out that Tyler’s friends had been together at Teo’s house and that to me was even greater confirmation that these dreams were no coincidence but truly came from God.
I felt peace about the fact that Tyler was now free in heaven but the trauma so soon after Roderick went to heaven was almost more then our emotions and bodies could handle. It was basically déjà vu, like the morning that we found Roderick was replayed with Tyler. Jake and I could not see how we could go through this again. It just seemed so impossible, those first five days we’d just cry in each other’s arms at times. Also, we could not bare the nights. Our bodies would just tense up in fear. We just knew that something had happened to Angeline, our spirits knew that it wasn’t true, but it was like our mind or emotions refused to believe it. We’d go check on Angeline and sometimes I’d just sit with her. The amazing thing was that she could sleep. She rarely noticed me coming in. Other times we were too afraid to get up and go check. We just lay in bed all tense.
The 26th in the morning I woke up at 3:00 and again I felt so tense and so scared. I couldn’t get myself to go check on Angeline I just lay there almost trembling in fear, so tense was I. At 5:00 I had enough, I got up and went to check on Angeline, when I went back to my bed, I felt my body relax and I felt a peace replace that fear. I just lay in bed so relaxed and peaceful. I was still awake at 6:00, Jake was awake by that time too.
I don’t know when I fell back asleep but at 7:00 I woke up from this beautiful dream. I dreamed that a lot of us loved ones were around a coffin and Tyler's body was in the coffin. I remember he still wore the same clothes he was in when he passed away. Tyler got up and came to my side. He commented on how much he loved all of us and I got all excited and grabbed him by the arms and said, “Do you want to stay? You can still stay!” He put his arms around me and started to sob, then he said he wanted to go, Jesus had called him three times and He loved him very much. I was so happy for him and never hesitated a moment, I just told him to go, “when I get there we will talk, and it will be like we have never been separated” I said and woke up. I so clearly recall the joy I felt in letting him go to heaven and I truly felt it would only be a short time until I’d be there with him. I started to cry and told Jake the dream, I knew then that we could do this. I told Jake God really cares for us and he has a purpose for us. For two months that fear was gone in the night. I have later still struggled with anxiety a lot, but I now know we can do this. I will not be surprised when I get to heaven if I will find out that Tyler told Jesus he needed to tell his mom and that God allowed him to come back in a dream to tell me.
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| Christmas 2015 |
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| Christmas 2017 Wearing the sweaters Jake bought just before Tyler left for heaven |
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| Christmas 2016 |
My heart breaks for you and your family Lisa. What a horrible tragedy.
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