A Peer Contact Answers the Question: “Are You Still Doing That?”

We just sent in our registration for our high school class reunion. It’s the first one we’ll attend. I was hugely pregnant with Tyler, our second child, when our 10th reunion was held, more in the mood for fuzzy slippers than dancing shoes. We haven’t seen most of our high school friends in years, and of course we are eager to see who they’ve turned out to be and what they’ve done with their lives. The registration form was fun to fill out. We were high school sweethearts; John was in the band and I was on the drill team. The questionnaire asked if we had any high school memorabilia to bring to share, and we answered, “ One another!” It will be interesting to see who shows up, who married, who had children.

I was completely unprepared when I came to the line on the form asking about our children. I filled in Jen’s name and age, and Jordan’s and moved on to the next line, but I returned in a second. What about Tyler?

Except for a few close friends, none of these people even knew Tyler lived, let alone died suddenly and unexpectedly when he was seven months old. Why bring it up?

This got me to thinking about imaginary conversations at a high school reunion. Mostly we’ve joked about what we’d say when asked what we’ve been doing for the past 25 years.

“Oh, gee, we spend a lot of time jetting back and forth between our homes.” “Neurosurgery keeps me pretty busy, when I’m not on the pro tour.” “I had to give up modeling. It was just all so vain.” What we’ve really been doing is working hard to make a living, trying to keep up with the house and yard work, making quality time for our children and one another, keeping the automobile insurance industry solvent with our ever-increasing premiums, … oh, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, we’ve been trying to figure out how a perfectly healthy baby could just die in his sleep and how we can come to terms with that.

A friend we haven’t seen in many years did know about Tyler. When he called, years ago, to see if we were going to the 10-year reunion, I explained that I was six weeks away from having another child. We sent him a birth announcement, the only correspondence we had until our Christmas card the following year, which contained a note explaining that Tyler had died the previous spring. There was simply no other way I could think of to explain the absence of Ty’s name. We did not hear from this friend until recently, when he called to see if we would be at the upcoming gathering. When it came to the part in the conversation when it was my turn to say what I’ve been up to, I naturally began talking about my volunteer work within the SIDS community.

“Oh… You’re still doing that?”

I am reminded, once again, of my then four year old daughter, who a few weeks after Ty’s death was asked by a well-meaning adult friend, “Are you feeling better now?”

“No,” Jen said. “He’s still dead.”

Yes, I am still doing that. I’m not doing it because I can’t find other things to do. I’m not doing it because I’m not “over it,” and I’m not doing it because I’m stuck, depressed, or obsessed. I’m doing it because Ty’s still dead. And because during the time I’ve been working on this article, approximately one hour, another baby has died, and another family is beginning that terrible journey of living life as the parent of a dead child.

The time and effort I spend as a parent contact and as a writer about SIDS and the family is a tiny fraction of the time I would have spent with my first son. I have missed 14 birthdays, 13 Christmases, 13 Easter baskets, and who knows how many baseball, basketball, and soccer games. This is not time you can make up.

When I first began writing, I remember an instructor telling me, “Write what you know.” It was good advice, and my first articles sold to magazines were about toilet training, making baby food from scratch, growing a children’s garden, and planning birthday parties. I knew that stuff because it was my life. And now I write about being part of a family with a missing member, because that is my life now. It is what I know.

I remember the exact hour that I had determined that Ty had been dead for as long as he had been alive. I’m not sure, however, when I realized that my address book was more than half full with the names of people I have met since Ty’s death. I can’t even put my finger on when it was that I decided I had to do more with our loss than just “get over it.”

Someone told me a year after Ty died that she completely understood why I was volunteering with our SIDS support group. “Someday,” she said, “you’ll feel that you have eventually paid them back for what they did for you.” Even though I will always be grateful for the help we received, it’s not a debt repayment plan that keeps me involved. I do it because of Ty.

I don’t know if I’ll have anything witty to say at our reunion. I’ll probably brag about Jen and Jordan, and commiserate with the others about growing older and the drop in real estate prices. I don’t even know if the issue of SIDS will come up, although it’s pretty hard to imagine that I’ll be able to keep my trap shut all weekend. What else am I supposed to say when someone asks, “So what have you been doing?”

I went back and filled in Tyler’s name next to Jen’s and Jordan’s on our registration form. I never pretended before that he hadn’t lived and died, and there’s no reason to now. I think I’ll even bring his picture, and when they ask, I’ll simply say, “Yes, I’m still doing that.”

This article is excerpted from Getting Through Grief: From a Parent's Point of View and appears in the book THE SIDS SURVIVAL GUIDE. It is reprinted with permission from the publisher, SIDS Educational Services, Inc. (1-877-We-Love-You).