Shelly & Travis

Shelly: So he stared changing a little bit. And that Christmas during his senior year was the first time I saw him react in a crazy way. Signals started going off.

Travis: So, we had no idea what we were in. I certainly had no idea what we were in. He pretty much moves out but he’s only staying right up the street from us. And he’s mad at me. He and I are battling a little bit just from the mess we’ve been in. We know something’s going on. We’re just not sure what it is. At the point you turn 18, you’re kind of your own guy. Parents aren’t in charge anymore and all that kind of stuff.

He was enrolled in Akron University and he was supposed to take night classes. We had kind of mended the fence a little bit. We helped him get a car. He was staying with the neighbor up the street from us. And I came through and noticed that his car was there. So I called him and I said, “Hey, I thought you had class tonight.” He said, “Yeah I do. But, uh, I have no gas in my car so I’m not going.” I said, “Well, I have gas in my car and I’m coming to get you and we’re going to class.” So we’re driving to Akron University … and … he was just out of it. I didn’t know what opiate withdrawal was at the time, but that’s what he was in.

Opiate withdrawal is like the worst flu you’ve ever had times about 50. You’ve got shakes. You’re sweaty. You’re vomiting. You’re aching. You’re just really in bad shape. And I knew something was wrong with him, so I stopped and pulled over and I said, “Tyler, what is wrong with you? What’s going on, man?” And he said, “Dad, I’m using heroin.” The first person he told he was using heroin was me. And so … I turned the car around and came back home and told Shelly where we were at.

We immediately started trying getting him into treatment. She got on the phone. Calling everybody. Looking everything up.

Shelly: And we couldn’t get him into treatment. They told me to call back every hour to get him into detox. I was calling back for two straight days. Finally Travis is like, “That’s it. We’re just taking him down there.” So we got him in the car and took him down. He had to argue with them and he told them, “You’re going to see him.” And then they took us in, did an intake and then sent us back out in the waiting room for hours. Finally we just left. But he had his intake so he was able then to get in their outpatient program.

Travis: The next five years looked like relapse, recovery, relapse, recovery. His best spell was when he was on Suboxone. At the time, there were nowhere near the amount of doctors treating patients with Suboxone as there are now. And the only place around here was a doctor an hour from here. So three days a week I had to drive him up there and go through counseling and then he would get his strips [a film that dissolves under the tongue] for Suboxone. During that time, he was clean. He’s going through recovery. He walks on the golf team at Walsh University. Gets a golf and academic scholarship. Plays half of the golf season for Walsh and is doing great. But it was also a huge pain to get from here to there. And we would take him because we didn’t trust him to go by himself. I would drive him up there and sit in the car and wait until he came out.

But Tyler eventually missed a meeting and the doctor kicked him out of the program. I don’t know if he had a class that evening or a test or something. That was the rule though. The doctor was pretty clear at the start and said if you miss a meeting, you’re out — because he had all sorts of patients and could only treat 50 and he had 100 in line. But it wasn’t that he missed a meeting to miss a meeting, he missed a meeting because of school.

When he would relapse, we would go four to five weeks with him on the street. Didn’t know exactly where he was. We would text and be in contact with him. But he was definitely using. Then we would get in contact and get him back into a treatment facility and he would then go through another short-term treatment program. We actually took him to Michigan once. We got a sponsor from a friend that was a $10,000 voucher. I drove him up there and stayed with him.

Shelly: They put him under anesthesia to get all of the opioids out and then they gave him a generic version of Vivitrol. It lasts in your body for a month and then wears off. And so he came home. We got a couple months of Vivitrol for free, and then we had to start paying for it. He was on it for about five months. At the end of one of the months, we were gone on vacation. And since Vivitrol wears off at the end of the month, he had used and relapsed before we even got back from our trip. And we usually didn’t go on trips because we didn’t want to be far away.

Travis: Vivitrol was a shot. And I gave him the shot. So we knew it was in his system and we knew you’re only supposed to give it every 30 days but that it does wear off at 27, 28, 29 days. Then it came down to pills because we couldn’t afford the shots. The shot was about $1,000 per shot. And we did it for a while and we couldn’t afford it. So then we went to the pills. When you are on the pills … if you don’t watch him take them … right?  So, he relapsed.

Five years of our life looked like that. Relapse. Recovery. He did a lot of great things. He did a body-building show where he was clean for a big stretch and was crazy about working out. He did Junior Mr. Ohio and was runner-up. First show he ever did. First time he ever tried it. He was a really talented kid … smart … athletic … good-looking — and of course I get to say that because I’m his dad.

Shelly: He had straight A’s until his senior year.

Travis: He could do anything. There were times he struggled with self-confidence. But there were other times he was a real risk-taker and showed strong will. He had tons of friends.

Ultimately … Tyler relapsed. He was on the street for a while. Living in his car. All of a sudden his buddy gets in big-time trouble. He steals a car. He breaks into the neighbor’s house and steals guns. At that point, we didn’t know if Tyler was involved in that or not.

We had gotten Tyler into rehab and that was a chore in itself.

Our insurance was two times inpatient, lifetime, 21 days. My insurance would pay for 42 days of inpatient treatment. So we obviously exhausted that. And were financially exhausted because we had put him into treatment and then we were down to state-funded programs. So … Tyler completed his 21-day program. Shelly and I decided we would start making plans for when he got to the end of rehab. We were going to get him into a sober-living home. Because we were not bringing him back here. We were not doing that dance again.

So we let him pick a place with his counselor. He picks Delray Beach, Florida — the capital of the world for sober living and treatment. This is in 2013 around Christmas. Shelly and I take him from Ashtabula, Ohio, and drive him straight to Delray Beach, Florida, to this sober-living home. He’s there for his birthday, which is December 23. He’s there for Christmas. And initially he’s doing pretty good.

Shelly: We get home Christmas Eve to celebrate with our girls. It was our second Christmas we spent without him. And that was really hard.

Travis: So he’s in the program for a couple months. It’s a sober-living dorm. They have a men’s side. A women’s side. You have to go through outpatient treatment and counseling. You’re supposed to get a job. I send money to pay his bills for his rent and those kinds of things. We pay for his groceries. You’re not giving him the money directly. He has an account set up because you can’t trust him.

Shelly: Some time in February, they called us because he had relapsed. So they put him in a detox center. After maybe a week there, not very long, we find out he’s on the street and homeless.

Travis: So he’s on the street in Delray Beach, Florida. We don’t have any family there. We don’t have any friends there. He doesn’t know anybody there except people he met in the program. I’m in contact with him pretty regularly. He has a cell phone. We had it set up so all he had to do was call a number and a treatment provider would come and get him and take him off the street. We had set it up several times so he could just go there. But he would never show up. He was homeless and on the street in Florida for five weeks.

Shelly: Our faith is the only thing that got us through this. This was all new to us. We’re learning to let go of him and let him try to help himself. And at that point, we pretty much knew we were out of control. God had him. And we had to let him figure this thing out. It was pretty much the hardest thing we had to do, was to know that he was on the streets.

Travis: So there’s a fine line between enabling the person and unconditionally loving them. Because I didn’t understand addiction as a disease — I made all of the mistakes in the world. There were times I was too tough. There were times I looked at it as if it were a phase. I made every mistake you can make. But here’s the mistakes I didn’t make — and these are the things I encourage readers to do. The mistakes I never made were I never stopped loving my son, I never stopped believing in my son, and I never stopped trying to get him help. And we lived in that lane — not understanding what we were up against — not understanding it was a disease, not understanding he had a brain disease, not understanding the power of addiction and why he couldn’t just stop.

Shelly: We didn’t raise him this way. We didn’t understand. He was the most caring and compassionate kid growing up. He knew better.

Travis: And we don’t claim to be saints, but our kids were in church. We have good jobs. We have a nice home. We are active in our community. Understand that we played by the rules. And Tyler could have done anything.

So he’s down in Florida. He relapses down in Florida. He’s always telling me, “Hey, you gotta send me some money.” “Yeah, I cannot send you money Ty. Call this number. We’ll get you into treatment. All you got to do is call the number.” Ty: “I’m not doing that. I’m hanging out with this Army Ranger. We’re going up to Fort Lauderdale and we are going to start working.” And then he’d call me from Fort Lauderdale and say, “Hey — you gotta send me some money.” In one breath he’d say, “I’m dying out here on the street,” and the next breath he says, “I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be working.” It was crazy. We know at that point, we are out of control, meaning there’s nothing we could do. And the only thing we could do was provide him a number for treatment. He’s got to make the call.

Shelly: And not only that, he had his driver’s license and birth certificate stolen, so had anything happened to him or if he had overdosed down there, we probably would have never known.

Travis: So for about five weeks, he’s homeless on the street. Eventually he calls the number. They come and pick him up, take him to the rehab facility when we get a call saying, “Listen, we couldn’t accept him into the rehab. We had to take him directly to the hospital.” I ask what’s wrong with him. They say they can’t disclose that to us. HIPAA laws. So Shelly calls the hospital. Of course they didn’t want to share much with us. We explained to them, “Listen, we’re in Ohio.” And finally Shelly got through to a nurse.

Shelly: I’m like, “If this was your kid, what would you do?” And she said, “I would come down.” So we’re like … all right.

Travis: Within a day we leave for Florida. We drive to Florida. And this is just heartbreaking but it is a fact of life. He’s in this hospital. He’s diagnosed with MRSA in his right arm, the same arm he broke four times, the same arm he had two surgeries on. And his arm is swelled up. Just huge.

Shelly: But it wasn’t only in his arm. He had MRSA systemically through his whole body. He had pneumonia. And he had a blood clot in his leg.

Travis: We get there and we walk in the room and the first thing you notice is the stench. The smell of a homeless kid on the street for five weeks. He’s kind of laying in this bed. He’s got the homeless man beard going. The homeless man hair going. Kind of laying in his gown. Half in it and half out of it. And they bring this nurse back and the nurse just starts saying, “He’s been argumentative, a little bit combative,” and blah blah blah. And I’m like, “Time out. Can we start by giving the kid a bath? Can we at least start there?” I was pissed. It was heartbreaking. Because they treated him just like they treated every bum on the street. And to us, that wasn’t a bum on the street; that was our kid.

And so I got the nurse out of the room. I said, “Just go. You don’t want to take care of him? I’ll take care of him.” And so we got him up. Got him in the shower. Got him cleaned up. I shaved him. And we start bringing him back to life even though he’s in a lot of pain. He’s got MRSA running through his body. He would get very tight convulsions in his stomach. Just gut-wrenching.

They treated him with IV antibiotics for two weeks. They would have let a normal person go home. But because he was an IV drug abuser, he had to stay in the hospital. Plus he had no home to go to.

Shelly: And he wasn’t withdrawing from opioids because they had him on Dilaudid. And of course every time they asked him what his pain was, he’s like, “10,” smiling. But he had to be on it to get to rehab because we didn’t want him detoxing there.

Travis: We sat with him for the next two weeks in that hospital. Changing his bed every day. Getting him in the shower. Feeding him his food. The hospital was set up with travelling nurses. You were seen by the same person only two or three times. No one really gave a shit about what they were doing.

Shelly: The whole stigma was seen there. Had we not gone down, he probably would have never gotten a bath.

Travis: But a lot of those two weeks were good memories for Shelly and me. Once we got four to five days into it, we started heading out and would bring him food he liked. We’d sit and watch golf. We would clown around. He would need to grab his stomach because I’d make him laugh … and he couldn’t really laugh.

Shelly: We got to spend some time with him that we hadn’t spent in a long time.

Travis: We were there every day. First thing in the morning we’d be there and spend time with him. Go back to our hotel in the evening. We did this for two weeks. Hotel bills the whole time. We spent our whole tax refund. We’re financially a mess … but that’s another story.

Ultimately, we got him out of there and into treatment. Once we got him into the doors of treatment, we drove home. And he got back into sober living after 21 days.

Shelly: But the thing is after those 21 days, he was begging them to let him stay. And they tried to get him a grant, but it didn’t go through. Probably because he’s not from Florida. The point was — he knew he needed longer. He knew he wasn’t ready. So they send him back into sober living. He’s there maybe a month.

Travis: We had planned a family vacation where we were going to take our girls and go to Florida where he’s at and spend two weeks down there and see Tyler. It looks pretty intentional to us at this point, but Tyler failed out of the program two days before we got there because he knew we were coming. We had called him and texted him and we picked him up on the street somewhere. At this point, he’s going to stay with us. We go into some of his counseling and spend some time with the counselors. And get a better feel for where Tyler is at. A lot of heartburn in those conversations for Shelly and me.

We have to make a decision. We were wanting Tyler to stay down there and stay in the program. But Tyler’s like, “I’m not staying here. I’m coming home. Either I come home with you or I beat ya home because I’m going to hitchhike or take a bus or something. Because I’m coming home. I’m not staying here one more second.” And so Shelly and I and the girls talked about it. We made the decision to bring him home.

He stayed here at our house for a couple nights. Hooked up with an old girlfriend. Was doing pretty good there for a while. He then moved in with her family. He was talking with Walsh about getting back into school and back on the golf team.

So Ty had two roommates while he was sober living in Florida. In July, his second roommate died. He jumped the I-95 bridge and committed suicide. That kind of screwed up Ty.

We don’t know exactly when he relapsed … whether it was the end of August or early September. But he relapsed again. Now his girlfriend and her family are going through it and they don’t know what the signs are or what this thing looks like. We tell them. Finally, Tyler comes clean. He’s relapsed. We need to get him back into treatment. I no longer have health insurance for him. We no longer can financially afford to put him into any type of treatment. So we get him lined up with the ADM Board [Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health] in Summit County. He signs up. He wants to get into treatment. They put him on a three-week waiting list before he can get help.

We’re in communication with him. He’s using one of our cars. He’s like, “Hey. Come and get the car so I have no way to go anywhere.” So we went and got the car and took it from him. He takes off on foot. And his girlfriend calls and says, “Hey. Tyler’s taken off. He’s not around.”

Shelly: And we’re kind of used to that. He would leave for days and so I’m like, “All right.” It will be all right.

Travis: Yeah. We’d been down that road before. That was typical relapse — him disappearing for two or three days and then texting you for something.

So the story is … and of course we figured this all out after the fact in the police report. Our youngest daughter was a senior in high school and she had her homecoming that Saturday night. You’re supposed to be celebrating that and we’re trying to do the best we can. Of course we know Tyler’s relapsed. The girls really don’t know at this point.

Shelly: I got up that day and I actually felt really good. I had written some stuff in my Bible and gone to church. Some people that had been praying for us took me aside and were praying. I came home. Travis had left to go to a golf outing. And someone comes to the door. It’s two sheriffs. And … I’m like … all right. Come in. I should add that we’ve left some things out. Ty had been in trouble with the law many times. He had been through drug courts, speeding tickets, all kinds of issues. And my first response is, “Please just tell me he’s OK.” And the one sheriff looks me dead in the eye and says, “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that.” I just immediately take off and go in the office and just start screaming and crying. My youngest daughter, Taylor, was upstairs and heard it. She said immediately she just knew. So she came down and was in there with me and consoling me.

Taylor tries to call Travis and has no luck for a long time. I’m in the office. I’m just bawling. Holding pictures. And Taylor finally gets a hold of Travis and —

Travis: — so she finally gets a hold of me. I’m on the golf course getting ready to play golf. My daughter calls and says, “Hey Dad. You have to come home.” And I’m like, “Hey, is everything all right? What’s going on?” And she’s like, “You gotta come home.” I say, “Taylor, I’m at a golf outing. I’m an hour away. Can I handle this?” And I could tell in her voice when she said, “Listen, you gotta come home.” I said, “All right.”

I come in through the garage right there and my youngest daughter is in my office. I see her face and I walk over here and Shelly comes out and meets me right there in the kitchen and she says, “Tyler died.” And so we both just kind of fell on the floor. Cried. Taylor came out. We just laid there and cried. And we decided we had to call our oldest daughter. She was at work and we kind of did the same thing for her and told her, “Hey, you just have to come home.” Can’t tell someone their brother died on the phone. And so she comes in. We tell her. We all lay on the floor there and just cry. And then you have to continue the process. We have to tell Shelly’s mom and dad. You can’t do it on the phone, you have to go tell them in person.

Shelly: Tyler was the first grandson. Tyler was their everything.

Travis: Tyler was super-close with his grandpa and his grandmother. He was the first grandchild. He was the golden boy. They cherished him and Tyler cherished his grandparents too.

Shelly: Driving there, we had to stop several times because our girls were throwing up. And my mom and dad live maybe 12 minutes away. It’s not very far.

Travis: So ultimately what happened with Tyler was … Tyler takes off on foot. Meets this kid at a gas station who is also addicted to heroin. They decide to get together and go buy heroin. It’s pretty routine for guys to know who’s using and who’s not using. They communicate pretty well with each other. And so Tyler hooked up with this kid, and within the buy, Tyler decides to take it. Within four to five minutes it puts him into an overdose. Because they’re not friends, this other kid panics. Drives down to a vacant lot, pulls Tyler out of the car, dumps him in this field. They find Tyler the next morning.

Shelly: The weird thing we found out from the lawyer is that the kid went home and used the rest of the heroin dose and was fine. It didn’t put him into an overdose.

Travis: That dose of heroin was laced with Fentanyl. Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. So Tyler probably got all the Fentanyl. The other kid takes the rest of it and it is heroin and it doesn’t kill him.

Shelly: They immediately caught the kid because he dropped his driver’s license.

Travis: A resident found Tyler that next morning while walking through the neighborhood. Called the police. Police find this kid’s driver’s license lying next to Tyler. They go arrest him. He goes to work with law enforcement. They make two more buys to the drug dealer. They then arrest the drug dealer, who’s an 18-year-old kid. He’s the one who sold the lethal dose of heroin laced with fentanyl that killed Tyler.

Shelly: We had to go through the chance of having a trial. It never ended up going to trial. He ended up pleading and we got him to plead out.

Travis: This happened real fast. So now … our life has been flipped on its head. We’re walking down this lonely, dark road. Shelly’s in her journey and I’m in my journey. And … for me … and I don’t know why I am the way I am, but I am. I’ve had some things happen to me in my life. I lost my brother when he was 18. I was 11 years old. So when I got the call from the sheriff saying we got this kid, I knew almost instantly that that wasn’t going to do anything for me. It wasn’t going to change my life. It wasn’t going to bring my son back. I also knew at that point that I needed to start moving into the lane of forgiveness. Because if I couldn’t get to forgiveness, I was going to self-destruct. I was raging. I mean … we used to have some picnic tables and chairs in our backyard. I burned everything up in my fire pit over that week. My buddies started bringing in cords of wood for me, going, “Man — you’re going to burn your house down.” I’m a mess.

So I’ve got this internal struggle going on saying that I’ve got to start moving to forgiveness. And it’s not that it’s easy. We have a whole lot of people we have to forgive. I’m pissed at the doctors. I’m pissed at the drug dealer. The lack of treatment. I’m angry. And I have a lot of people to be angry at, including myself. Because I didn’t understand the disease. I made all kinds of mistakes. I have everybody in the world to forgive, including myself. And if I can’t get in that forgiveness lane, I’m going to self-destruct.

It took about a year and a half to get to this trial. And over that time, we’re talking and realizing we didn’t want to be dragged through a trial. This is Tyler’s name. At the end of the day, it won’t do anything for me. So we encourage the prosecution to cut a deal. If you sell a lethal dose of drugs that kills someone, you are charged with involuntary manslaughter. The maximum penalty for involuntary manslaughter is 11 years. Most cases get seven to eight. In this case, this kid got four. We encouraged them to cut a deal because we didn’t want to go to a trial.

At the sentencing of the drug dealer, Shelly spoke. Her sister spoke. My girls spoke. A couple of Tyler’s friends spoke. One of the things I knew I had to do is I had to look this kid in the face and tell him I forgive him. And that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. I didn’t do it for him. I did it for myself because I knew I had to do it. I did it for my girls so they could start working towards forgiveness. So they could see that if Dad could forgive, maybe I could forgive and I can start moving on with my life.

Tyler was the third young man to die of a heroin overdose in this community within 11 months. My youngest daughter, a senior in high school, has two friends who also lost their brothers to an overdose. So these three girls start working with the guidance counselor. They decide they’re going to put a program together and start sharing their story.

Shelly: They shared it from what they experienced. Each one of them. Going through it with their brother. They talked about how their parents weren’t able to be there for them.

Travis: Within two months of Tyler dying, they had a community event at the Lake High School auditorium. Over 800 people in the community showed up. These three girls each share their stories. For me — I’m sitting there watching this thing and watching my 17-year-old youngest daughter have more guts and more courage than her dad has, leading our family and telling our story. During this whole time, no one knew what was going on in my life. I didn’t tell my closest friends. I didn’t tell anyone at work. I sat in shame. I sat in embarrassment. I thought I’d failed as a father. Shelly and I would get into arguments. She would say, “Hey, we have to start talking about this.” I remember getting really mad at her one time and saying, “If you think I’m going to be the heroin advocate, you’ve picked the wrong man.” Shelly wanted to start shedding light on it. I didn’t. In my job, I have to get elected every three years. I work for the Teamsters Union. I could see the negative ramifications of how our story could affect my career and affect me. I’ve always done the right thing. How did I raise a heroin addict?

Any person who knows me and knows our family or knows Shelly was in shock. Everyone was in shock. All of my friends and a lot of our family found out about Tyler by watching the news on Channel 8. And now two months after that, I’m watching our youngest daughter courageously tell our story. So I sat there — very proud of my daughter. Proud that she learned guts and strength and courage. But I was embarrassed for myself. I was embarrassed for a couple things. One: I didn’t have the guts to tell our story. Two: One of the things I heard her say there was, “The first time I ever saw my Dad cry was when we told him Tyler died.” I was embarrassed for myself that I didn’t have enough guts to share my true feelings with my family and with my girls because I was always tough. Not that I didn’t tell them I loved them. Not that I didn’t hug them. But I didn’t show feelings. I can get tunnel vision real easy and can really grind. And I did for almost six years through Ty’s addiction.

Once these girls started sharing their story, they spent the rest of their senior year visiting schools throughout Star County and Summit County. Shelly’s sister then creates a Facebook page. We dream up this name. We call it Breaking Barriers, because of all the barriers you have to break that are associated with the disease of addiction. We start advertising where these girls are going to go out to speak. And that is how our organization starts to grow — through my daughter.

Shelly and her sister come up with a backpack program for the holiday season. Shelly starts reaching out for names in the community of people that have overdosed and died. We reach out to their families and ask them to put a picture of their loved one on with a letter about their loved one that would be received by a homeless woman. It was through RAHAB Ministries [Reaching Above Hopelessness and Brokenness] which ministers to prostitutes and drug addicts. So they had all of the kids’ names embroidered on backpacks. Names and dates. They had gloves and hats and snacks in these backpacks and we gave them away. Shelly called that project “Hope Is Alive.” And so we called our organization “Breaking Barriers: Hope Is Alive.” The thing we know is hope.

Shelly: The mother I started the support group with — we knew each other from high school but I only knew her name. Our girls played basketball together and we’d say hi. Her son died five months before Tyler. When someone dies from addiction, it’s not the same as someone else who loses a child from cancer or even a car accident. Because you have that stigma. We knew what that felt like.

Travis: Not only are you going through the grief of losing your child, OK, but you’ve brought all of this additional luggage to the table: the shame, that you weren’t a good parent, that you didn’t raise your kids right, all that stigma associated with addiction. You’re just dealing with all that. No one understands that lane unless you’ve been in it.

Shelly and Sue decided they were going to start a support group for families who lost a loved one. I think the first meeting had 27 people. Now the average is about 12. It’s mainly women. This group has been up and running for a year and a half now. There is such a solid core group of about 15 that have brought each other back to life. I go there sometimes and share and speak. What I’ve learned from that group is I’ve watched them be broken and shattered and then come back to life. When I’m self-involved and it’s just me, myself and I — I drown in my own self-pity. But when I start sharing and I can encourage you and you can encourage me, we bring each other back to life. Often people say, “How do you do this? How do you share your story?”

Shelly: My son took his last breath on the land this rock was on. It just had a special place for me. It was really hard at first to go to the lot. I would just break down. After a while it became my favorite place to go. I would go and pray over that land. I started feeling like something’s going to come from this. We’re going to get this land and we’re going to do something on this land.

Travis: Shelly would start going to this lot and she would walk over there and spend time there. Then she would tell me about it. She would bring home some flowers she picked there. Wild weeds is what they were, but she’d bring them home and call them something beautiful. Then she even started taking a couple friends over there that she’s close with and they started praying over there.

Shelly finally convinces me that I have to go over there. So the first time I went to the property, I threw up. I stood there for maybe a couple minutes. And then I slowly started going over there. It was better than the graveyard.

Shelly: At the one-year anniversary of Ty’s death, we decide to have our closest friends and Ty’s closest friends go over to the property. We got permission from the guy who owned it. There were probably about 20 of us. We went and had a remembrance circle. We played a song. We had a pastor that prayed for us. I had little roses and at the end everyone took one. I had made a memorial up by the road — a cross my dad had made. I added flowers, a picture of Tyler and the dates. Everyone took a rose up there and placed it at the memorial. And that’s when I took this rock. Basically, I was claiming that land.