A Year Later

It has been a year.

While this blog is Drew’s story, it is also about Team Llewellyn. Some of you keep coming back to this site - some to say good morning to Drew, some to re-read a few lines or a dozen pages, and some to check to see if anything is new. At least that is what we do, and what you tell us you do. The visit counter keeps going up. Maybe it's time for an update.

In case you couldn’t stay in touch, the family returned to schools, jobs, and volunteer work. Westbrook added great happiness in our initial saddest days, and Dylan’s birth doubled the chance to see how life renews itself. Mary’s second child is on the way for October, so the joys of first words and first steps will continue.

Ben bravely returned to school in Australia but is now back in the States and finished a good semester at Appalachian State. He brought his humor and enthusiasm home intact, with a noticeable dose of maturity and rugby skills. Mary and Wade shared Westbrook’s first year with us all, including a cake-smearing first birthday last month. Melissa and Dan hosted us for Thanksgiving, a family favorite holiday, followed by the birth of Dylan, who was almost born in the hospital parking lot. We turned Drew’s birthday into an event, inviting friends and family to donate blood and platelets to the local bloodbank which we hope to do annually in Drew’s honor.

Yes, we also did more hospitals. As if we hadn’t had enough in our months in Charlotte and Duke, Boxley did two tours at the Mayo Clinic for a pacemaker swap and an aortic graft in the fall, while Dan spent Christmas struggling with a rare reaction to medication. Jane stayed healthy but is engaged with Duke and CMC to bring cord blood collection to Charlotte. Her first visit back to Duke was emotional but worthwhile – they are excited about her passion to bring more attention and action to stem cell transplants.

Jordan is continuing her studies in Communications at ECU with a December 2007 graduation date in sight. We talk often via email, cell phone and text messages with lunches and visits on rugby fields as we can. She is and always will be an important member of TEAM LLEWELLYN. While this has been a painful year, we are all proud to have made it through - and made it through together.

As to our view of the year, we could all write a book. Unfortunately, The Grief Club is already taken.

Grief, says the book, is a club you join. Outsiders don’t fully understand, and the club has different rooms for different losses, since even inside the club, grief is hard to generalize. The toughest room is the one for those losing kids. The books say grief gets worse for a few years before it gets better. It doesn’t go away; it just becomes part of your life, which you manage as best you can. We manage grouchy moods and frequent tears and our loss of innocence day by day.

New babies are the best thing ever for the club members, and we have been lucky to have two cuties. Big smiles and lots of energy are contagious. Ben is a fabulous uncle, and he can’t wait for the little ones to walk and throw and start chasing him in the yard. The blogs are filled with images of great-grandparents holding the boys, grandmas feeding them and lullabying them to sleep, and those bright eyes when Mom and Dad come in the room. No grief prescription could be more potent, nor as well photographed. See the evidence at themetwo.blogspot.com and http://themethree.blogspot.com

The war losses and (especially as alumni) the Virginia Tech tragedy remind us daily of other families losing young adult children who are painfully joining the club. With our close family, the support of so many friends, and no ongoing financial, legal, or guilty aftermath that many families experience, we are somewhat blessed. Maybe we are not in the toughest room in the grief club.

In the coming weeks, we will gather at the Harris Y near our home on the sidelines of the practice field where we spent so many hours watching Drew and others practice and play. Drew did not want a cemetery plot, but we wanted a place to remember him. We proposed a simple bench to the Y staff and instead they are building a GameOn shelter for parents to sit for their long hours watching the kids practice and compete. Some families will have a Drew who stays later, and practices longer, juggling a ball on his foot for hours and pounding shots at his brother and dad. They are the really lucky ones.

Drew discussed going to the Y on that day last March when, after a few pains in his stomach, we all realized that the cancer had come back. He didn’t practice that day, but a small plaque will encourage other kids to do so. Stop by for a visit sometime to the Y next month, or to our house any time. He would like that.