They say the first year is the hardest after someone dies. The day itself was not as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, the week building up to it was worse, I really was not travelling very well at all. Highly emotional, teary and pretty much a mess. On the day I had planned to watch his funeral DVD, but in the end I left it until the next day to watch it. All the family, even the ones in Darwin, all wore our Road Trauma Support ribbons in honour and memory of Kyle on the day.
The Compassionate Friends support group that I go to, for those who have lost children, sent a card to comfort us and my Sister, Jacky, and Mum and Dad sent a box of yellow flowers. We always try to match the ones he had at his funeral as much as possible, yellow roses, yellow gerberas and yellow daisies. Yellow is a cheerful colour.
Vince and I went out on the ANIMAL (our BMW R1200 GSA that we took on our world trip in 2015-2016) up to the crash site at Gigiganup. I put yellow flowers at both crosses, the one the “Boys” (Kyle’s mates) put up by the roadside, and the one we put up where he died. My Dad has made a proper cross that my Sister, Jacky, will bring down in March to replace the temporary one we have there at the moment. I also put the box of flowers from Darwin there as well.
After that, we went to Lord of The Skins (I had been there with Kyle as a teenager when he was having his eyebrow re pierced. It’s also where I got his name tattooed last year). Luke, the same guy who did my tattoo of Kyle’s name on 2.2.2016, did another tattoo for me, of a design that Kyle drew in his sketchbook. It is also the logo I have adopted for my Reiki business, Celtic Healing (www.celtichealing.com.au). It had to be a lot bigger than I planned due to the sharp points in the design, Kyle would be laughing at me, he knows I don’t like tattoos, and just my luck the design he made would have to be bigger. I’m not trying to copy him and move into “sleeves” or anything, I just wanted a permanent way to honour his memory on this first Anniversary…this will likely be the end of my tattoo extravaganza!
We had a quiet day, and in the evening we met Neena and the two kids for dinner at Plukkas in Scarbrough and then went down to Peasham St Dog Beach where Kyle’s ashes are. We planned to release some white and yellow frangipanis (as our home in Darwin had many in the garden where Kyle grew up), but a huge gust of wind caught them and blew them everywhere, typical Kyle he always did things his own way – and a sedate and gentle release was obviously not what he had in mind! It made us all laugh as the kids ran after them to try to catch them. My friend, Jodie, gave me a Frangipani from her garden as a gift to pot up.
It’s hard to accept that it has been a year already, it seems like only yesterday I got that phone call…. I miss you and love you always and forever my baby boy xxxxx