The sun will come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
There’ll be sun…
Looking through photos, I had to grin when I stumbled across this old gem. It was taken at HiCaliber after a volunteer appreciation party in early 2016.
We had dress-up clothes out for a photo booth. Your standard party-goer donned attire, snapped a pic and quickly disrobed.
Not my son. Not Tanner-man.
You don’t get fabulous just to take it all off.
That’s just crazy talk.
So he wore it for much of the remainder of the evening. And the more people smiled, the better he knew he looked.
And the more he smiled…
The more I smiled.
The sun will come out tomorrow.
This is just me, Tanner’s mom, taking a moment with my family, and friends that have become family, and rallied behind me, cried with me, supported me and loved me.
I just wanted to check in.
To let you know I’m doing my best to get through this.
Like every other mom in my shoes, I never dreamed of losing my baby. It’s still not sunk in. My heart won’t accept it’s real.
The grief that accompanies losing a child is indescribable. I feel like I’ve been drunk for nearly two weeks and I’ve not cracked a bottle. One minute I can stand. The next minute I’m wondering who replaced my legs with gluten-free spaghetti noodles and desperately searching for something to break my fall. I can put words from my heart to paper, but will find myself speaking sentences of words that don’t connect.
One minute I can be speaking to someone, the next I find myself looking right through them, to someplace far away.
I’m making it through each day.
One foot in front of the other.
One breath and then another.
To every one of you who has stepped up to support me and my family, thank you.
To those who have sent notes, flowers, meals texts, phone calls, offers of support, gifts for Travis and everything else, I’m utterly overwhelmed by your love — both tangible and virtual.
The movie Annie was a favorite of Tanner’s for many years. The singing, the dancing… I sometimes wonder if he ever remembered the orphan he once was, waiting for a mom… waiting for me.
The sun will come out tomorrow. I can’t imagine it will ever feel as bright, but I will see him in it.
Tanner, you are forever my sunshine.
