My brilliant, inspiring, infuriating, funny, magical beloved has left his body. Tyler died 10 days ago, August 21st, 6 days before his 45th birthday.
Overall, I think I’m managing incredibly well, given the circumstances.
But also, maybe I’m not? There is very little I’m certain about anymore. Maybe I’m navigating this gracefully. Maybe I’m in denial and repressing. Maybe I’m psychotic and haven’t realized it. Maybe I’m about to implode. They all seem like equally possible truths.
It feels like the universe has been gearing me up for this – that everything I’ve been through is like grief bootcamp. I’ve graduated from varsity level loss and now I’m playing with the pros. It’s become second nature and instinctual to navigate, but I also respect that this is the most treacherous path a person can walk. I don’t take it lightly, and each step is careful and intentional – I’m keeping an eye out for trail markers so I don’t get lost.
I’m trying to keep moving but not push myself. To keep checking in, breathing through the waves of grief, gratitude, anger, love. I’m trying to go limp and let it all flow through me. I congratulate myself heartily for every mundane, grounding, “real life” accomplishment – finally managing to do laundry, wash my hair, unpack the suitcase sitting on the floor for weeks.
The longing is unbearably intense. Falling in love creates the same euphoric brain response as cocaine, and brain scans show that heartbreak activates the same neural pathways as drug withdrawal. I am absolutely fiending for a fix.
I’m huffing his t-shirts. Staring at his picture. Listening to his voice notes. Rereading old text messages and memorizing the underlined and highlighted passages in his books. Sobbing at his half-eaten chocolate bar in the fridge and savouring the casual intimacy of sharing a bite. I’m desperate for a hit, scrounging any scrap of physical connection I can get.
But I’m also the most present I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve never trusted myself this much, listened to myself so carefully, been this in tune. I’ve never felt more confident, less anxious, more in flow. You can’t have the love without the pain. But the pain isn’t what I want echoed.
In recent months, I’ve developed an intolerance to patronizing sympathy and a fear of being perceived as eternally tragic. Of being forever pitied, held at arms length, nervously avoided, tiptoed around.
I don’t feel tragic, and I don’t wish to be seen that way. I have experienced tragedy, but it feels like an honour to have been able to give and receive so much love. Of course I want more of it. Of course I’m in agony – mourning is excruciating. I want everything I lost 10 days ago, everything I lost 4 months ago, and everything I’d lost in the year before that. Everything I’ll never have. Everything he’ll never get to be.
I’m on my knees but I’m fucking alive. I am being held and it’s been humbling and awe-inspiring to be immersed in such an outpouring of love. My own devotion and everyone who sent messages, who came to the hospital to visit, to sit with him, to take shifts. The friends who took care of him and took care of his family. Friends who witnessed me, fed me, propped me up. The absolute wonder of love as something tangible, more than just a concept. Love as an action – love as showing up.
Experiencing the power of it has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. The anguish and tragedy are obvious, but I want the gratitude and reverence to reverberate too. When you feel that clutch of fear or the pain of loss, I hope the other side of it is what spills out – the extraordinary love. That's all there is.
I made a post about his passing on social media and when I tried to think of what to say, I wanted to express that I was grieving but not hopeless. What immediately came to mind was Rumi’s, "The wound is the place where the light enters you" and an image of myself shattered into pieces yet held together with blindingly bright light.
My entire being has been blown wide open and everything is flowing through me – I’m at the mercy of the tides rolling in and out. I’m absolutely aching for his presence, but our connection is as strong as ever. (I wrote about our relationship in a previous post, titled Looking Directly into the Sun because that’s how grief feels: painful, unsustainable, and devastatingly beautiful.)
I have always envisioned our connection as a tether from my heart to his heart. And I always felt silly about it, like it was a childishly romantic, indulgent fantasy. Until he described it the same way when telling me how he’d felt when we were apart. That he’d accepted that he would just never stop experiencing it, and that especially when things were going really well, when he was happiest, he would feel the tether and think, “if Jess was here, then things would be perfect.”
It was a window I had to firmly shut and latch in order to move on, but I had still occasionally felt it over the years. Though it was a secret, private embarrassment, I’d put my hand over my heart and talk to him. “If this is you thinking about me or worrying about me, I’m okay. I’m happy. And I wish you nothing but peace.”
Having that connection confirmed as real means I can believe it now and lean into it this time. I gratefully welcome the glimpses of divine peace, love, joy, and oneness that have been flowing through me. And I’m certain that what I’m getting is only a fraction of what he’s experiencing right now, wherever he may be.
I know it’s real. I know it’s him. I know what he feels like, and I will never not recognize his voice.
Jess. So beautifully expressed… your writing is so heartbreakingly real… inspiring and devastating… but somehow comforts me … not your job, but Thank You! Love you.❤️
I wanted to apologize. It has taken me two months to recognize that Tyler had a gift at his end of life. We were so caught up on how to amplify the rest of his life that we forgot to celebrate his awakening. I wish I could sit next to him for hours asking about what it feels like to look at the world through his eyes. Sadly, tt felt hard to hear him be so optimistic facing such an uphill battle. It felt easier to try and push him to do more for himself. But the truth is that was just us projecting onto him.