Voice Memo
Vo ice Memo
Gabby Tate
6 months after the accident
Tyler is picking me up for church tomorrow! Tyler!!!
Technically, Tyler and I are only seventeen months apart—I did the math. And when I think about the majority of couples in the world, that really isn’t much of an age gap. Of course, we’re not an actual couple. We’re just friends, but I’m only a couple weeks away from fifteen now, and who knows what might happen in the future? I like him so, so much.
When we met three months ago during one of my tutoring sessions in his mom’s office, I seriously thought he was one of the cutest boys I’ve ever seen in real life. But the thing about Tyler is, he’s also one of the nicest people, too. He was bringing his mom a mug of hot tea because she was recovering from a sore throat. She didn’t even ask him to, either. He just did it for her on his own! Tyler is always helping somebody. He volunteers after church every Sunday to put away chairs and help with cleanup. I started staying after, too. Tyler has introduced me to so many friends. Most of them know at least a little ASL, but he’s also crazy good at lipreading. I hope I can do that someday, too. I really love this church. I wish August will come with me someday. I’m still praying about that.
Tomorrow morning Portia has to be at the church super early because of the Christmas production, so she asked August if Tyler could pick me up and take me to the first service so I could help with greeting. I was freaking out inside when he said yes. Maybe I should pray that those twelve minutes to church feel like an hour.
Christmas is only two weeks away. August keeps asking me what I’d like to do, but I don’t really know. It’s hard to think about having Christmas without Mom and Dad. I asked him to bring down the plastic tub of holiday stuff from the attic, and he did. But I haven’t been ready to open it yet. Maybe this is how August feels about the box in my parents’ closet. It’s hard to open something you know will make you sad. For now, we just have a Christmas tree with a string of colored lights on it.
Aunt Judy always says grief is complicated. I’m sure she’s right about that; she’s a lot smarter than me. But sometimes I think grief is pretty simple. Right now it looks like an unopened tub of Christmas decorations sitting on the floor of my bedroom.