It has been three years since Teagan was killed by her mother. Some things are hard to believe – still no trial? How can we not know how Teagan was killed? At the same time, other things are not hard to believe at all. Teagan remains a part of our daily life and we still talk about her every day. We see her live on through her brothers which are either beautiful or sad depending on the day.
Clearly, this is not a date to celebrate but at the same time, you simply cannot ignore it. As a family, we focus on celebrating her birthday and remembering her formally at that point. As for tomorrow we will visit Teagan’s grave and bring her Christmas ornaments for her wreath. We don’t talk about what happened this day (though as noted earlier most of it we still don’t know) as we don’t want to the boys to end up in a dark space right before Christmas. Having said that we don’t ignore the reality she is gone and talk about her more than usual around the holidays. Rather we just don’t highlight the specific day she was murdered.
Nevertheless, there is a different energy this weekend. Teagan’s older brother has been installing kids games on his IPAD from when he and Teagan were toddlers. Last night I had a fascinating conversation with Teagan’s younger brother. Each night I rub his back before he goes to sleep. Last night he asked me “Who do you love the most in our family?”. That seemed like a loaded question but I answered: “I love everybody in our family the same”. Jack replied “Me too except I love Teagan more because she is not here anymore. I love her the most”.
I am not sure any statement could make me more happy. After the shock of Teagan’s death dissipated (the trauma never does) one of the things that most upset me actually dealt with Teagan’s younger brother. There was nothing in the world that mattered more to Teagan’s than her brothers. In fact, one of the things that kept me going after her death was knowing that Teagan’s marching orders to me would be “give my brothers the best life possible”.
However, because her younger brother was only two at the time of her death we wondered what memories he had now let alone years later. Professionals warned us that over time he would not have any ‘original’ memories of Teagan in his life. This was tragic as I know it would crush Teagan if she thought that her little brother would not remember her (you may remember from past posts that she was buried in her favourite bracelet which was a heart with two parts – one side says big sister and the other says little sister). Thus I could not be happier that our youngest child loves his sister the most out of our entire family. Teagan is smiling.
Teagan's Voice 