Army Wife
Death by suicide has long been a problem within the U.S. military, and not just among veterans: In 2020, suicide rates among active duty service members hit a six-year high.
On August 28th, 2015, Heather’s husband Tyler became one of those statistics.
Theirs is a story of friendship, of love, of family, of service and duty … and of trauma, domestic abuse and mental illness.
If you’re experiencing thoughts of suicide, you can call or text 988. If you’re a victim of domestic violence and want out, you can call the National Domestic Violence hotline. You’re not alone.
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Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.
Nobody who hits rock bottom ever expects to be there.
And typically when we use the phrase “rock bottom,” we’re talking about someone using drugs or alcohol hitting a point where they realize they don’t want to use anymore.
But there’s such a thing as an emotional rock bottom, something that any of us can experience.
Sometimes rock bottom happens quickly, coming out of nowhere to slap us in the face. But sometimes, that big, life-changing moment comes after a series of little, questionable moments.
Sometimes the worst night of your life comes after a hundred terrible nights. It feels like a slippery slope you thought you were scrambling up, only to find yourself sliding back down.
Heather: I think that anyone that has gone through abuse, it doesn't ... It doesn't happen overnight. It's not like you fall in love with this, this person treating you this way. It happens ... it almost seems, like, slowly. It morphs into that.
For Heather, hitting her emotional rock bottom happened over time -- it took months before she realized her relationship was no longer what it once was. That lies, abuse and anger had replaced some of the good parts.
But again, she didn’t see it for what it was when it was happening. Which is what made hitting the bottom hurt so bad.
Heather: I feel like at the time everything was happening, I didn't recognize that it was abusive, because it just was what it was.
It was what it was. Until … it became something much worse.
I’m Nora McInerny, and this is “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” And today’s story deals with domestic violence and suicide, so please listen with care.
Before things fell apart for Heather … they had to come together. And the beginning of this chapter of her life started when she was in nursing school. That’s when Heather met Tyler, who had recently come home from deployment and was stationed at an Army base in North Carolina.
Heather: We were actually introduced by his sister-in-law and my mother, who work together. And I had just gotten out of, like, a relationship with my high school sweetheart and had moved home and was super brokenhearted. And I show up to the first date with this guy and he has this Jeep on 45-inch tires and has an AC/DC shirt on, and cowboy boots. And I'm like, "What did I get myself into? I don't want to let this guy in my car." [chuckles] And he's got this real thick Southern accent. And he was just a charmer. [laughs] He was a character. He had a great sense of humor. He was really laid back and down to earth. And he had this way of finding a feature or a quality in every single person that made them beautiful. We have kind of a unique start, because he was very anti-relationship. So we were best friends, and we spent time together for two years, almost, and he still never admitted that we were in a relationship. We didn't call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. A lot of bar hopping in the early days. [laughs] We would go out in his Jeep and go mudding. Got stuck a couple of times that way. [laughs] I mean, a lot of times it was just as simple as, like, I would go with him to his barracks or we would just hang out and talk and have a good time there.
They were young, in love, and having fun. But then, Tyler got re-stationed to Fort Carson in Colorado, and moved away from his not girlfriend Heather.
Heather: He called me every day, and was telling me that he missed me, and so he bought me a ticket to come and visit him on my fall break. And he proposed. And I was just like, "If you're joking right now, I'm going to kick your butt.” [laughs] Like, "This isn't funny." But obviously he wasn't joking. And then he goes, "Oh yeah. But just so, you know, can we get married in, like, two days? Because I have everything all planned." He had found a photographer. My mom had sent out a dress. He got an officiant. We got married in Garden of the Gods. And it was just him and I and one of his friends and his wife. And that was it. And I ... I went on fall break and came home married. It was kismet.
It’s not an exaggeration to say overnight Heather went from having a long distance … situationship … to suddenly being an Army wife. So her fall break ends, she goes back to North Carolina and starts planning her move to Colorado.
Heather: He was deploying shortly before Christmas that year, so I flew out to see him a couple more times before he deployed. And in those couple of visits, we ended up buying a house. In January of that year, I had to move across the country with my little U-Haul trailer in the middle of a snowstorm to get there in time to close on our house and move in by myself. [chuckles]
While it was definitely challenging to move to a new city and be alone while Tyler was deployed, the military spouse lifestyle wasn’t new to Heather.
Heather: My stepfather was in the military. I feel like I went into it understanding that this was going to be the life. And so I feel like I went into it probably a lot more prepared than others do. But still, I mean, I was 21 years old and 14,000 miles away from my closest relatives, and it was surreal. You're not the one that enlists, so you think it's not as big of a deal, but in a second, you know, the Army can tell you, "OK, well, if you're going to go to the station," and you have to just uproot your life and go somewhere else. You're potentially far away from your family and friends or whatever you have built. And then you potentially have your service member that is deploying nine months at a time. Tyler's deployments were a little shorter due to the nature of his work. But I mean, I've had friends that their husbands were deployed up to 18 months. But you're married to this person that's halfway around the world, and you honestly sometimes don't know if they're going to come back. It's ... it's stressful.
But it’s also stressful because when they can find time to talk, they can’t talk openly.
Heather: Everything is monitored, your communication. Because my stepdad did the same thing, he explained to me, "Look, you need to be aware that there are certain things he cannot tell you. So come up with a way of communicating what you need to know." And so, you know, I can't remember the word or what I would ask him, but I knew that if he gave me a certain response that it was OK. And I would ask him, he would say, "I'm going to go out for a couple of days, and I'm not gonna be able to call you for three days. And if it takes longer than that to call me, don't worry. But, you know, I'll talk to you when I talk to you."
And Heather, like so many other military spouses, feels like she has to be careful about what she talks to her husband about, so she doesn’t worry HIM … doesn’t stress HIM out.
Heather: I didn't want to burden him with the things that I was dealing with, because I knew that he was dealing with his own stuff. And ... I mean, I feel like, you know, you think about these guys going into a situation, not going in with a clear head, because they're worried about what's going on at home … it could be potentially dangerous. So I felt very much like I had to hold everything together and make it OK for him. And I feel that he probably did the same for me. But whenever he got home, and we could talk, and it was just him and I, he would share stuff.
A few years into their marriage, Heather and Tyler welcome a son named Milam.
Heather: They had their little routines – given, you know Tyler would be gone 75 percent of the time. But whenever he came back, it was always kind of … jump right back in where we left off, so that he felt needed and a part of our family. And so it was always great, because he would wake up with him in the morning and he would make, like, a dozen eggs, and the two of them would just eat over easy eggs for breakfast. I have, like, this video of him actually teaching our 2-year-old son at the time how to “make it rain.” And it's just hilarious to watch because you could hear his accent, but being 2, Milam wants to do it himself. And so he's like taking this, like, pretend money from him and in like just making a huge mess.
[audio from home video archive]:
Tyler: Say, “Make it rain, Daddy!”
Milam: Make it rain, Daddy! I do it.
Tyler: [laughs] You’re gonna do it.
[papery sound of money falling through the air]
Milam: Wooohooooo!
Tyler: Yayyyy! Double high five. Double pound it. Double shakes.
[sound of Milam laughing]
Many survivors of domestic violence say it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the moment when things turned — when the darkness started to seep into their lives.
For Heather, there was a slew of things that started to change with Tyler … and by default, their relationship. And the first was his temper.
Heather: He was always kind of a hothead. So, like, for us to go out and be at a bar and him to say something and like mouth off or even be confrontational, it wasn't anything.
Heather remembers one night, when she and Tyler went to a wedding for one of his Army buddies. Tyler picked a fight with another colleague that almost turned physical, and Heather was mortified. But as she looked around the wedding, she realized the other Army guys there were laughing it off, like this was normal behavior.
And Tyler’s drinking was also getting more frequent.
Heather: He had actually gotten fired from his team because he had had several alcohol-related instances on training trips. And instead of being forced to go over to this other battalion and stay home as a sense of punishment, he basically walked across the hall and got a job from another team sergeant that joked that the previous team sergeant was just being, excuse my language, “a pussy.” And basically, it was well and good. And so he goes over from one team, where he's being reprimanded for behavior that is not OK, to another, where it's almost encouraged. And then to add on more, you know, the steroid use started then. He was using anabolic steroids that his team sergeant had set him up with. He would tell me, "I'm working out this much so that I can do my job better.” I was not as good at standing up for myself at the time, given I was 23, 24. But I also feel like to me in my head, to be a good wife sometimes was just, “You know what, this is what he's doing, and I gotta roll with it.” And so I feel like, you know, I made comments about like, “Hey, maybe we need to cut back on the drinking and try to get in fights a little bit less.” But it was, it was always a joke, you know? Like he would laugh it off. I remember he got arrested when he was doing training out in Bragg, because he punched out a bouncer in a strip club, and he didn't get arrested at the strip club. The police actually picked him up at the gate, and I didn't hear from him for like thirty-six hours because he was in jail and then his phone died. And then, like, whenever we talked about it afterwards, it was like, we're going to make a joke about, “Oh, this guy's never seen ‘Roadhouse’ or something like that.” [Nora laughs.] And that was, I mean, well and good. (Nora: Relatable, yeah.)
This was the beginning of not just Tyler’s slide to rock bottom, but also Heather’s. Of course some of his behaviors were red flags, and she saw that. But no one else in Tyler’s life, no one in the Army, seemed to share her concerns. It was hard to tell if she was right, feeling the way she felt. And of course, she loved him. This was her husband, her son’s father.
Heather: One of the really big things I remember about the later stages of our relationship: I was working hard to get through nursing school, but there was always something that kept me from finishing it. I had decided that I wanted to go to school in Denver, because they had a quick program that I could get through, because I knew that we were going to be re-stationed. And then he decides that he wanted to go and be a pilot. And so he said, "Just don't apply to that. We're going to move, and you're not going to be able to finish it. So why bother?" And I realize now that it was a way of sort of creating this barrier around me.
We’ll be right back.
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After months of Tyler’s drinking getting more frequent, him using steroids and having violent outbursts, Heather admits this isn’t normal. It isn’t okay. And that she isn’t safe.
Heather: I'm going to be very honest: A couple of months before everything happened with him, things in our relationship were turning to ... be abusive. And at that point, I had a 2-year-old son, but I felt hopeless. And I felt like I was so dependent on this man and loving him that I didn't know if I would be able to take leaving him. I feel like when people are on the outside looking in, it's entirely different. They don't give that compassion of knowing that if you haven't been in this situation for yourself, you don't know that it isn't, like, just night or day. It's not a switch that flips. It's slow, progressive sometimes. And it's like you wake up one morning and it's like, what happened? [laughs feebly].
Heather is still miles away from her family. She depends on this man and his job for everything: for housing, health care, her social life … it’s never simple for anyone, but it’s very tangly for Heather. So she reaches out to another military wife for some advice.
Heather: I’d had a friend that got restationed about two months before all this happened that I remember talking to on the phone. She is a nurse. We talked very briefly about what was going on and she said, you know, "They're really good at compartmentalizing, and it is what it is. It's just kind of what we signed up for."
It’s what we signed up for.
This fellow Army wife wasn’t the first person to dismiss the manipulative and dangerous behavior. Tyler’s co-workers, who laughed about him trying to fight a buddy at a wedding, did the same thing. The superior who hired Tyler after another team sergeant fired him, without ever addressing the firing, did the same thing.
It seemed like as long as Tyler was in the Army, nobody would hold him accountable.
Heather was starting to feel depressed and hopeless.
Heather: I went to the doctor, and these were civilians that worked on post. But I had a doctor once told me, because I was asking for antidepressants because I was struggling, that all military wives were the same and we just needed to stay medicated to deal with it rather than coping like a grownup. I attempted to take my own life at one point. After surviving, I was like, "I'm not going to let this be in vain. I survived for a reason, and I think that I have got to get my stuff together, and I've got to get my kid out of this situation, because no one's helping me out, and I have to do it for him." And so … I was trying to find a way to either change things or change my situation because of how things had dramatically changed.
Heather knows Tyler can have a hot head, and she has no idea how he’ll react, but she knows she needs to leave the relationship.
Nora: How did you communicate that? How did he react to that decision?
Heather: We talked about it like we talked about everything else. We had a conversation and I was like, you know, “I feel like I'm not making you happy anymore. And I don't know how to. But I love you. You're my best friend. I want you to be happy.” And so it was very calm, very amicable. Yes, it was strange, but it wasn't strange, because I feel like with what followed, it seems crazy that we were in such a good place. I told him that I wanted to start looking up in Denver, because I didn't want to move home and take Milam away from him. And he started helping me look for places to stay and saying, like, “Oh, this place has a broken fence. But I could come up next week, you know, a weekend, and knock that out for you, so you wouldn't have to worry about it.” It was just like … this is going to be what is.
This is a huge relief. Heather was sad, but it seemed like she and Tyler would figure out how to co-parent and be in each other’s lives, even if they weren’t married.
There is a lot of research out there, from people who are way bigger experts in this kind of thing than we are, about how to talk about suicide in a way that doesn’t exploit, or sensationalize, or glamorize a person or the way they died.
We also have a responsibility to do right by our guests and give them space to share their story and the things that happened to them. To make sure that their own lived experience is heard.
I say all of this here because we wouldn’t normally include details like how a person took their own life, or the things they said in their final moments … but we are going to do some of that here. Because the circumstances surrounding Tyler’s death very much involve Heather.
The rest of the episode is going to include talk of assault, gun violence, and suicide.
It’s August 28th, 2015. It’s been three weeks since Heather and Tyler decided to split up, and one week since they officially filed for divorce. They’ve been living together amicably, creating a co-parenting plan and talking about their future as a divorced couple. And Heather feels so hopeful that things just might be okay.
Heather: So I went to bed at like eleven, midnight. And at about 2:00 in the morning, I was woken up. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "Oh, I'm just grabbing something from the drawer." But he was wearing his cowboy boots and the pants that we had just purchased so that we could go to a friend's wedding. And I was confused, because it's 2:00 in the morning. And so I realized, upon waking up a little bit further, that he had gone to the specific place in our bedroom where the gun was kept.
Heather: I jumped out of bed and immediately followed him into the guest room. I started screaming at him, and I tried to physically fight him for the gun. I did everything in my power, but I mean, I'm 5'2" and, you know, he was 5'9" and 200 pounds of muscle. Like, there was … there was nothing I could physically do to take that from him. So then I went into kind of survival mode of, "OK, I have to talk him off this ledge." And I tried to. And he was ranting that if I couldn't love him, no one would. And so at that point, I feel like I … I thought that this was another trick. I thought he was trying to manipulate me into staying again. I was fed up, honestly. That's horrible to say. But I was fed up with being dragged down and dragged along. And I felt like I needed to save myself in that moment. And so I, you know, I was trying to talk him off this ledge, and I said something like, "You can't do this," or, "You won't do this." And the last thing he said to me is, "Oh, I won't," and pulled the trigger.
Heather: I immediately started to try to take a pulse. I called 911. I remember crying on the stairs and stuff and trying to get my son out of his room. And they stopped me, because it was considered a crime scene at that point. I had to sit and talk to police, because it was being questioned whether or not I had something to do with it. And all this time, I've … I literally have blood on my face and stuff, and my 2-year-old is looking at me and playing on the floor.
Heather: I was in shock. I had to tell someone at that point. And I remember I did not have the team sergeant's phone number because I was, for some reason, in the state of shock, I was concerned with he wasn't going to go to work on Monday. I text one of other team sergeant's wives, and I was like, "Do you have the team sergeant's number? I need it. It's an emergency." And she said, "Why? Is everything OK?" And I said, "Tyler shot himself." And she goes, "Oh my God, is he OK?" And I put it very bluntly. I said, "No, he's dead. Can I have the team sergeant's number, please?" And within the course of four hours, every guy off of that team was at our house. They went into his room, essentially, and took things that they felt that probably were inappropriate. They took his computer and wiped it. My mom finally showed up and basically kicked everyone out and said, "She's got to sleep. She hasn't slept in 24 hours."
Since Heather became an Army wife at 21 years old, she was told by the community around her that her needs and wants were secondary to Tyler’s. Her job was to support her husband and maintain the life that he created.
And unfortunately, that mentality continued after his death.
Heather: Unfortunately, family drama that surrounded the situation made it so much worse. And I wanted to laugh out loud sometimes, because I was just like, "You people have no idea who he was." But I felt like I ... because I was struggling with our relationship, I felt I had no right to speak up and say things, or go against what his parents wanted. There were two things that I asked for: the closed casket, and I wanted to give the eulogy. And basically, I showed up for the wake, and they told me, "Honey, if we don't leave the casket open, people are going to think the worst." And I'm like, "This is the worst. Are you kidding me?" The last time I saw him, I had brain fragments in my hair. Are you kidding me? And I had to stand in this room for eight hours with a casket open. And then when I asked to give the eulogy, they didn't know if I would be able to get through it, and it was also important to them that his wrestling coach spoke. So I had to share his eulogy with the wrestling coach that he hadn't seen in over 15 years.
One of the people who came to the funeral was that friend – that other Army wife that Heather called for guidance, who told her, “This is what we signed up for.”
But when Heather looked at her son, who lost his dad, and her dead husband – who never got the help he clearly needed – she disagreed.
She didn’t sign up for this.
She was not ready for any of this.
But the military was.
Heather: When this happens, the military does what they call a line of duty investigation to determine whether or not he was killed in the line of duty or not — whether or not they're going to take responsibility for it, essentially. And it's all of his records going through the military, any physical exams and all that. It's the toxicology report, and then it's also interviews. No one talked to me about this. It was the people on his team and previous team that were interviewed and talked to about it, because they were the ones that worked closest with him. One of the crazier parts of this for me was that one of the military wives that was on his previous team worked at the psych eval clinic. She actually called the police station and said that there was no way that he could have completed suicide, and that I must have done it, and that I needed to be further investigated.
The police never investigated her, but having this woman even accuse her added to Heather’s feeling that the culture in the military wasn’t supportive of her family.
When we talk to Heather, she has her husband’s line of duty investigation report with her. It’s several inches thick.
Heather: On the front is a cover page expressing condolences. It has to be edited. There are pages that have black marks to take names out of it. But essentially what they do is they have to determine if it's in the line of duty in order for Milam to receive any of the benefits that he receives, for me to receive any of the benefits as a surviving spouse, which is health insurance and just the retirement he would have got paid if he would have retired with the military, now my son gets.
The report finds that her son should get these benefits. But another part of the report compiles all of the interviews completed after Tyler’s death. Remember, Heather wasn’t interviewed, but in this section she is mentioned quite a bit.
Heather: It was all about the problems that he was having at home, and how he was trying to stabilize my mental health, and that must have been where this came from.
In other words, Heather is to blame. And there are some people who truly believe that, still.
But Heather did have allies. She has allies. And Tyler’s mother is one of them.
Heather: The night that everything happened, I remember calling her, and she said that the first thing that she told her friend when she picked her up was: "Thank God he didn't take them." And um ... she knew. [Crying.] And I'm so grateful that I ... I know that she doesn't blame me. But she knew what was going on, and it was ... it was a perfect storm.
Thank GOD he didn’t take them. Because he could have.
Heather: When you lose a member in the service, they give you what's called a casualty assistance officer. And essentially, it was his job to drive me to appointments. One of the jobs of the officer that was driving me around to do errands after everything had happened was to pick up the gun from evidence at the police department. And I remember that day picking it up, and they have this list of what was collected and stuff. And he had loaded one other bullet. And I remember finding this out, and I was so angry. I was so angry. But, you know, I keep that now, as silly as it might sound, I keep it to remind myself that even though I tried to save him, ultimately, I saved myself, and that was the best I could have done in that situation.
Heather: I feel like I was not the only one that could have spoken up and done something. And while I regret not speaking up or making my voice louder, I’m really angry about the fact that other people saw that things were happening and said nothing. Those that could have held him accountable, or should have been the ones to hold him accountable, said nothing. And after the fact, they took no responsibility for it, either. You know, after the fact, I went through PTSD therapy. My therapist, she talked about blame, because a lot of what I dealt with was guilt for surviving. And she said to me once, you know, "What if you are to blame?" And, you know, I ... I feel like I've accepted that part of that blame is on me, but it's not just on me. I share that blame with many others. But I do know that I’m one that is consciously working to forgive myself for that. I don't know if that will ever change.
While there are moments in her relationship with Tyler that Heather could point to and say, “Hey, I should have said something. I should have pointed out he might need help,” she of course is not to blame.
It’s always more satisfying to have one clear scapegoat, a person you can blame, with a name and a face and a job title so you can go full Karen and talk to a manager. It’s not quite as satisfying to say, “Oh, ya know, it’s a multitude of factors!”
But for Heather, there is a multitude of factors that led to her husband’s mental decline and the trauma she faced.
One certain thing is Heather is not the only person with a story like hers. Milam is not the only kid with a parent like Tyler.
One of the factors in this tragedy was the culture of the military. People who study military families find that domestic violence is higher for military couples than civilian ones. Psychological issues like PTSD and substance abuse are common for service members, but studies have found that the culture within the military isn’t always supportive of seeking help or addressing mental health issues. Suicide rates among military members is disproportionately higher than civilians, and more service members die today by suicide than in combat.
The military has access to these studies, and we reached out to them for comment for this episode but didn’t get a response. Tyler is not the first service member to behave the way he did. But as Heather found out firsthand … there wasn’t a lot of acknowledgement about this from his superiors in the Army.
We’ll be right back.
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After Tyler’s death, Heather got roped into the Army’s procedures for when a service member dies:
Heather: When this happened, someone showed up at my house, and they gave me this binder. It says, “The Days Ahead: Essential Papers for Families of Fallen Service Members.” And it is roughly a five-inch binder. It goes step by step, what offices you need to go to to make sure that you're getting certain benefits. I mean, it proves helpful. But the idea that these are made in advance, like … I just think about that guy that sits at the desk putting these together, and he just like, you know, I feel like he has a little chart on his wall and he's like, “Oh, well, April's coming up, you know, I better double my quota because that's a real tough month.” And it's just kind of this ridiculous idea to know, like … this is going to happen.
The binder was helpful, sure, but she could have used some guidance earlier, guidance that Heather feels was missing from her years of marriage to Tyler.
Heather: There are family readiness groups, but it's more to help spouses deal with deployments. There's no information given out about who do you need to contact if you're worried about this? There were times when the team members intentionally tried to keep the wives apart and from communicating with each other to prevent light being put on some sketchy stuff.
Nora: If you could make a binder for people who are in the situation you were in with Tyler, what would you put in it?
Heather: Honestly ... I feel like resources for substance abuse need to be in place. It's something that I especially feel strongly about. I currently have a friend that is in the military now, too, that is struggling with PTSD and because of the things that he went through, he's dependent on prescription drugs. And it's not his fault that he's being dismissed. And he had to fight for it not to be dishonorable, because he was recovering from a surgery, so I feel like substance abuse is one of those big things that people don't realize can be a red flag of PTSD, but it also can just be substance abuse. And there are so many jobs in the military that you can't seek out help for substance abuse without being reprimanded.
After Tyler’s death, Heather was seeing clearly how the issues that plagued her family for years were actually so much bigger than any one of them. And while she often felt like her needs were second to her husband’s, she also recognized the strength she developed during this time.
Heather: I feel like military wives, at least the ones that I have known, do not give themselves enough credit. You go through so much, and you feel like you have to hold it all together for them, and to support them, because you think of it like they're the heroes that you're supporting. They're the ones serving their country. And … no. You're serving, too. It shouldn't just be on you. You should be able to ask for help, too. And you know, this idea of having to support them and hold it all together for them, I feel like ultimately it can be more damaging than anything else.
After you SAVE your life, how do you LIVE your life?
Heather: I started to realize that, especially after everything happened and I had gotten to a point of reflecting back on it, that I had to fight for what I needed and to create the life that I wanted my son to be in. I figured, you know, I had been in Colorado for so long. I've already been alone for so long. I can do this. So I sold my house, and I moved to Denver. My mom has this expression of, "Sometimes you just got to get up and shake the shit off." And that's what I feel like that six months following was for me. And there was so much grieving, but there was also … I feel like in that six months, I found my strength to move past this and not let it become the only thing.
It’s a thing … it’s a big thing, but it’s not the ONLY thing. There’s more for Heather, and more for Milam, who looks a lot like Tyler but is totally, completely himself.
Heather: Yesterday was “Dress Up As Your Hero Day” at school, and he dressed up as David Bowie. He has this book about Bowie and it talks about how, you know, at times he had some very outlandish dress and ways, and he inspired so many people, though by doing that, just be themselves no matter what. And I just, you know, he's going to school in his leather jacket and he's got the red streak across his face and his hair's all spiked up, and he's just owning it. And I'm just so proud of him for being that person.
In those six months after Tyler’s death, while Heather is living in Denver, she shakes some shit off and follows a long time dream of hers. She enrolls in culinary school. And in her culinary school class of a bunch of 18- and 19-year-olds … there is 27-year-old Heather … and one other grown up in the room. ONE other student over age 25. His name is Christian, and the two of them become friends.
Heather: He wasn't even on my radar. I was just kind of like, shrugging him off.
Christian is a former marine — another military guy — and that background helps him understand Heather and understand her past. It helps him understand Tyler. And that understanding allowed them to fall in love, and eventually get married.
Heather: I still struggle with PTSD, and this poor guy just takes it from me some days and he gives me so much grace and forgiveness. And he honors Tyler's memory.
Once you save your life, you live your life. You blend it all up: your past, your present. That’s how you build a future from the bottom up. And that’s what Heather is doing for her son, Milam.
Heather: Tyler isn't a bad word in this house. We talk about him openly and freely, because that's how it should be. He doesn't know all the details, obviously, but I feel like I never want him to see this situation as something that happened to us, or that this is the big thing that's going to mark his life. I want him to see this as, you know, "Yes, I lost my dad, but he wouldn't want me to sit here and just go over and over and grieve him for the rest of my life." And I share memories with him that are happy, and I also say to him like, "You know what? I used to tell your daddy Tyler this all the time. You're so full of poop that your eyes are brown." I'm always here to talk to him about this. And if it's not me that he wants to talk to, he knows that he can talk to Christian. I don't want to make his father into this hero, if that makes sense, because I feel like putting him up on a pedestal would not be the right thing to do, because it gives him this idea that he was perfect, and that wasn't the case. I understand why people do that, but I don't think that it would be the healthiest for Milam. I've always been honest with him to the extent that I've told him how he died and stuff, and I've shared with him that I felt that he was, because he was intoxicated, he made a mistake that he couldn't take back. I feel like that just leaves room for him to know that it's OK. We all mess up. It's OK to ask for help.
If you need help, there are resources. If you’re experiencing thoughts of suicide, you can call or text 988. If you’re a victim of domestic violence and want out, you can call the National Domestic Violence hotline. We’ll include the link in our show notes.
You are not crazy.
You are not alone.
You deserve to be safe and loved and okay.
You deserve help.
This has been “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” I’m Nora McInerny. We will have a lot of links in our show notes today, including to the statistics that we cited, other articles and resources we used to create this episode. Big thanks to Heather for sharing her story. This episode took a long time to create because it is so sensitive, and we got help from our former editor and longtime friend of the pod Phyllis Fletcher, who we love. This episode was produced by Claire McInerny and Marcel Malekebu and project managed and edited also by Jordan Turgeon. I’m Nora McInerny. I think I already said that. We are an independent production of a company I named Feelings & Co. Feelings & Co. Geoffrey Lamar Wilson did our theme music. You can find us online at TTFA.org, on Instagram at @ttfapodcast, and I am @noraborealis everywhere. That’s not my last name, it is a play on the aurora borealis. Lot of people think it’s my last name. Lot of people. Okay, bye!