Sunnyvale Train Station

Below is the train station where Ky fell. The Sunnyvale CalTrain Station. You can see a train approaching, heading north. The same type train, going in the same direction, that Kyle and Laura rode from Santa Cruz. Above is the front car, with the type of ladder he climbed. The top window: that is where the engineer sat whom Ky was trying to get to stop the train, because he wanted to get back on to continue his ride home, with Laura.

On Sunday, on Ky's 23rd birthday, I went to the station with my friend Maggie and George, one of Ky's oldest and best friends. The trains are double decker and Laura and Ky rode on the top. When their train stopped in Sunnyvale, it was delayed because of a suicide further north but on the south bound side. An announcement said it wouldn't be leaving for 45 minutes. Ky left to get them food. Laura looked out the window and caught Kyle's eye. He did a little skanking dance. Her last sight of him was smiling and happy and dancing.

He walked to a nearby area where there were all kinds of food, Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese. A really charming welcoming little street with cafe chairs in front of places, doors to bar type joints wide open.

At some point Kyle got the calls and texts from Laura. The train was ready to leave. Sooner than the 45 minutes promised. The detective said 20 minutes, the newspapers said 30. He left the restaurant without the food and ran.

Looking up at the train, George and Maggie and I could understand what Kyle was trying to do. The engineer in his little window was just out of reach to our tall guy. It would have seemed possible to get the driver's attention. If he'd just look down to the right he'd have seen Kyle waving. But he didn't and Kyle climbed up a step or two or more--I'm not sure--of the ladder on the front. At some point, Kyle would have realized the train was moving and he'd better get off. He tried to jump, I believe, and then fell, hitting the back right side of his head. From the height of the step and with his own 6 foot 8 inches, the impact was massive.

We could picture it and make sense of it. It was good to be with George, who has been so dear, keeping in touch and visiting me. George, who was the last friend to see Ky and say goodbye, having put Laura and Kyle on the train not an hour before. It wasn't supposed to be goodbye for long. Another concert was coming up.

Maggie had so thoughtfully brought flowers and petals and we scattered them. And we hugged and of course I cried.

I was glad I went to the train station. Glad I could begin to see through my own eyes what Ky was trying to do. Glad I could understand his last conscious minutes. Glad I saw the quaint sunny street of shops. Glad I could picture him dancing off to get him and his sweetheart some food. That's the best place to freeze the memory.

Last Picture/Show

In honor of Ky's birth day, Yuma sent these pictures of Kyle and Richie Spice. He took them at the Sierra Nevada Music Festival in late June of 2007. This may be the last picture taken of Kyle, so it is very precious. He was listening intently or thinking hard for sure. Yuma said, "We had so much fun and we wanted to see Richie Spice so bad for so long!!! and it happened!!" He said it was so chill and irie and the best concert ever.

Thought you would all love to see this picture of Kyle. One more of his expressions for us to savor.

Thank you Yuma. One peace and love.

April 13, 1985

On Sunday, it will be Kyle's 23rd birthday. The picture above is of Kyle, minutes old, in the arms of his dad. Kyle was two weeks overdue. As a boy he used to laugh and say that he didn't want to come out because he was so comfortable in there. The doctor got concerned, so he gave Gear and I some articles to read about inducing and told us to talk it over at dinner and then if we were comfortable about it, to just head to the hospital. So late in the evening about 11pm, the nurses started to induce labor. That kicked things off and eventually I had about 10 hours of hard labor (less than with Miranda), but then pushed for 3 hours before the doctor said he was going to have to perform a Caesarean.

Kyle Campbell Whitham McLeod was born at about 6:36 pm. He was 22 inches long and weighed 9 pounds, 15 and 1/4 ounces. We were pretty impressed with that weight, but the same day at the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital a 13 pound baby girl was born. If Kyle got to be 6'8" I wonder how big that girl is today. He had the biggest hands and the longest fingers and Gear said, "Piano playing power forward." Kyle was so wide awake under the lights in the nursery that the nurses had to take him into their dark station for him to get some sleep. Ky's big sister, Miranda, welcomed him home a few days later and just adored him. With our boy, our little family felt complete.

On Ky's birthday, I'll be up north in Cupertino attending a memorial event by the Musculoskeletel Tissue Foundation. There will be recipients there and there will be a slide show of all of last year's donors. It may seem a little odd to be doing this; but I'm feeling drawn up north again and I'm not put off by public grieving rituals. At least I'll be crying with a bunch of other people for a change, in a place where crying is expected. And I think it might be harder to be at Forest Lawn, which is where I'd be otherwise.

But I will celebrate a little bit at Forest Lawn tomorrow, before I leave town. I'm bringing some sandalwood incense to burn and a little battery run speaker (that I had given Ky) to play some reggae, and I have a tiny little bottle of bubble stuff--I'll probably leave that there for any of you who will be visiting him. I'll bring some flowers of course. It's odd not having food around when thinking about celebrating a birthday, particularly Kyle's, but of course you can't leave food around a grave, what with ants and coyotes.

So if you're in town and free on Sunday, the 13th, consider giving Ky a visit or-- wherever you are--maybe raise a glass to Kyle and say a few words. If Ky were here he would be partying: with music and friends and libation and laughter. And it would be all good, wouldn't it.

Dearest boy, I love you and miss you and carry you in my thoughts and heart every moment. Happy Birthday, Kyle.

There is joy . . .

After an email from my dear friend Suzanne, I realized that mostly I am blogging about Grief. And while that is very cathartic for me (after all, Grief is everpresent in my life), it is hard on you, dear reader. And it also gives you a false impression of Life After Death. Because Grief and Joy are not incompatible and right from the beginning I was capable of laughing and even being downright silly. One's sense of humor doesn't die with your loved one. And I am sure it would be comforting for you to know that.

Because I am finishing up Taxes (appointment at 2pm), I can't wax away here, but I do want to share with you the joyful thing that happened this morning. See that pool up there? See that duck? Well, as I was heading for my swim, this cute Quacker and his mate had beat me to it. I've seen them for two springs now, early morning, swimming around in the condos' 85 degree pool. I was curious to see what would happen, so I got in. Mr. & Mrs. Mallard got right out. I felt bad, but then again, I wasn't sure that swimming with ducks was like swimming with dolphins. They stood together at the end of the pool, not a foot away from the edge, keeping their eye on me as I did my 15 laps.

Then, I got out. Sat still for a few minutes, and the two were back in again. As I started messing with my cell phone to capture this pic, the Missus got a little nervous and jumped out. The Mister continued to swim as if to say to her, "Come on back in, Mama, the water's fine." She didn't and I took off.

So. A little story. To bring a smile. And to let you know that I smile a great deal, laugh a great deal, and am joyful a great deal.

But, to the taxes.

Yes, taxes, again -- and more reminders

I think any of you who are following this blog must wonder at all my references to taxes. Why so many? Well, I filed Federal and State taxes late last year, in October. Then, in February, I was busy doing my City Taxes. Now, I am determined to do my Feds on time. I'm not doing too badly. Should be better prepared for my appointment on Friday than I normally am.

The challenge? Reminders of Kyle are everywhere. They are in the envelope of receipts--all the purchases for the Last Thanksgiving, the Last Christmas, the Last Concert in town, the Last Year's Birthday party before the Last Concert, the Last Birthday Dinner. Why did I save them? Cause I just collect all my pieces of paper from my wallet, purse, calendar book, briefcase bag, desktop, and throw them in a file and then greet them all again at tax time. My theory: the more receipts, the more deductions I'll find.

But what do I find along with those little deductions? Kyle-related receipts that have nothing to do with my taxes. But can I throw them out now? Of course not. How can I throw out the receipt that tells me what we had to eat in honor of Ky's turning 22? How can I throw out a random receipt with spaghetti carbonara on it--it had to be Kyle's order. How can I throw out a receipt for boxers--the annual Xmas re-stocking of his underwear. Or the receipt from Pearl for all his art supplies.

So I stuffed those receipts in an envelope and wrote "Kyle" on it. And I took other receipts and put them in an envelope with "Miranda" on it.

And I got back to my taxes.

Making Survival an Art

Verizon and Kyle and Dylan and Me

This has been a tearful afternoon. It's a bit of a long story.

I pay most of my bills through a pay company that used to be called PayMyBills.com. Great name. Now, it's Paytrust. Is that supposed to inspire confidence?

Anyway. For some reason I can't get my Verizon bills paid via Paytrust. I follow the steps, make new passwords, go from Verizon back to Paytrust and back to Verizon. The links don't seem to work. And I don't spend that much time worrying about it, so I tend to wait a couple of months and pay my wireless bill when I start getting text messages and home phone recorded reminders. To make it worse, I actually have 2, count'em, 2 Verizon accounts: one for my wireless and one for my home phone and DSL. My home phone quality s****. My condo association is supposed to give us a new TV cable company which will have DSL and then hopefully I can trash Verizon completely (altho they do own the local area--I thought we'd put competition and free choice back into our telephone experience following the execution of Ma Bell). But I digress.

I've been avoiding other calls from Verizon. The ones that want me to re-up for a new contract. I had a 2 year contract for phones for Kyle and me. Together we had a family plan and 1400 minutes to share. We never used them all and it was a safe number considering the number of client, family, and friend calls I get and the tendency of Kyle to get a call over with quickly.

I did call last fall trying to change my phone situation, but I was reminded I have signed a contract thru January. I didn't have the strength to fight it, although I did have enough to passive-aggressively lay it on the Verizon Associate that since my son was dead it would be hard to use both phones and both lines. At which point I hung up.

Meanwhile, I had written down (in the blank book I carried up north in which I had written everything I needed to remember about hospital, donor, detective, mortuary, cemetery, and financial business--among other things) the numbers and times of Kyle's last calls, his last incoming and outgoing text messages, and so forth. There wasn't a lot stuff on this cell, because Kyle had lost his previous phone a few weeks before his death. In fact he'd had to get his numbers from me to make a new contact list and so didn't have many numbers put back in. He explained that now he only had the numbers of his very best friends, because if they hadn't called him, he didn't have their numbers to call them.

Even tho I had written down the phone information, I lived with a dread that I hadn't captured it all. I kept wanting to go through it all again, scroll every menu to try to get every bit of information about Kyle's last minutes and days, but I didn't seem or want to find the time. And I was damned if I was going to turn off the cell phone before I finished my search. Of course, I was thwarted by the fact that the cell phone stopped recharging. So it sits on my desk, enticing me with inaccessible secrets.

January passes and I still don't go to Verizon. I get calls about re-upping my contract. I ignore them. Why? I just don't want to cut off Kyle's account. I don't want his phone to be dead (although it is anyway). I've already cut off all kinds of things with his name on it. I just hate the finality of it.

But then comes the call that I need to pay the phone bill and I talk with Verizon and promise I'll do it by Monday and then Monday comes and goes and finally I'm at work in between things and think that I better not get my cell phone cut off--that's my livelihood--and so I go on line and find the phone number and make the call.

And a really lovely woman named April (check out today's date) helps me pay my bill. And I tell her about Kyle and of course cry too much but she is so sweet. And she helps me change my Plan so that I am not paying twice as much as I need to. And she reassures me that the chip in Kyle's phone will hold the information until I am ready to do something about it. Thank you April.

So that was part of the reason that the waterworks started. And continued. Another reason was that I've put in 40 extra hours in the past week on a project and haven't gotten much sleep. And a third reason was that I was listening to my shuffle and Bob Dylan's gravelly voice singing "He Was a Friend of Mine" in a mournful minor key:

he was a friend of mine,
he was a friend of mine,
every time i think about him now
lord, i just can't keep from cryin'
cause he was a friend of mine

And then other lyrics like: he died on the road . . . a thousand miles from home . . . he never harmed no one . . .

And then I just couldn't keep from cryin' either . . .

And I just was missing Kyle so much and feeling so sorry for myself and wanting to reach out for comfort (as I was editing the comfort and grief sections of the Psychological First Aid training manual!) but not really wanting to do it at the office. I knew I would get home and I would blog and my blog would absorb my grief and transform it into a neat contained pretty-type-faced entry. And I knew that by the time I was through, my tears would have dried.

So I'll catch up on sleep, put Ky's cell phone in a drawer, and stay away from Dylan for a bit. And keep on bloggin' Mama, bloggin' your blues away.

Bless you, my blog, and you, kind reader.