9 years ago

9 years ago today, my brother lost two of his friends in a silo accident.

Writing that sentence brings crocodile tears to my eyes. It makes my heart hurt and a lump form in my throat- the same thing happens every time I think of August 12, 2003.

I will always remember this day as I know so many people will. I can vividly remember working my summer job at our local hardware store and being called into my then boyfriend's aunt's office. She had been crying so I knew something was wrong. She looked at me and asked if I knew Tyler and Cody? Of course, they are my brother's friends, I've known them forever. They died.

I remember crying, I remember asking what, what happened, why did it happen, was everyone else okay? It was an accident in the silo, the fan didn't get turned on or wasn't working or something, they were overcome with methane gas. That was all we knew at that point. And at that point the rumor was that there may be another boy in the silo. No, no, no, no! Was all I could think and i wanted to be with my brother. 9 years ago they were just little boys-- just 16 years old. They were too young and my brother and his friends were too young to mourn two classmates. TWO classmates!

These boys had already lost so much. I believe the number, at that time, was 5 of them had lost their Dads. FIVE of these boys had already suffered the unthinkable and now they lost two of their very good friends- one of them had lost his dad just two days earlier.

Bill and I did a lot of hugging and crying those next few days, weeks, months... but my heart has never hurt so bad as when I watched my brother and his friends say good bye to their buddies. It will forever be burned in my mind watching the two caskets being loaded into the hurst flanked by all of the boys in their Cougar football jerseys, running to get to my brother after the service and just holding on to him, not wanting to let go, wanting to take even part of his pain away.

No one will ever really know what happened that day, the chain of events that lead to one of them falling or entering the silo and losing consciousness, we will never truly know who died first, who went in to rescue the other- what we do know is that these boys were such true friends that one of them gave of their life for the other. They were good boys.

In the years that have followed Bill and I have always visited Tyler and Cody's graves whenever we go there for a funeral or to visit our grandfather-- 'let's go see the boys' I know Bill and his friends have visited way more than I have.

In the end, these were our boys. Chewelah lost two wonderful boys that day. Two boys that I firmly believe were on their way to making a big difference in our community. Two boys who would have made fantastic men. Two boys who never got to be men.

9 years later we still cry for them, we still miss them and we still wish they were here. I pray for their families and their healing. I pray that they know that we still remember their boys and we still love them so much!

Tyler and Cody, you are gone but you will NEVER be forgotten.