1

I don’t remember the first time I met Tyler Cop. He had just always been around. He was a constant in my life. I couldn’t tell you his favorite color, or what he liked on his pizza. But I could tell you about his smile, about his laugh. How he walked, what his voice sounded like, how old he was in a picture.

2

Have you noticed that people don’t own funeral clothes anymore? A girl wears a gray skater dress with the tallest pair of wedges I have ever seen. I see three or four boys wearing sweat pants. This wasn’t sudden, they didn’t have time to go and get a pair of black slacks and a tie?

3     

When my friend told me Tyler was dead, I didn’t believe her. It was too sudden, too out of the blue. I wasn’t in denial; I just didn’t think it was possible. Maybe he hadn’t shown up to football practice and a rumor started. It was too unusual; impossible even. To think that someone my age had just stopped living, stopped being. It was almost too crazy to be true.

4

I see pictures all around me. One is from last year’s yearbook. He’s wearing the team colors, blue and red, and smiling so you can see his gap. The others are old, one from when he was five or six. A few from when he was ten. The pictures are almost all old. He had one of these faces that never aged, he just got taller. He was maybe around six feet when he died. It was a big coffin.

5

The last memory I have of Tyler is when we were at a church retreat. He and the other boys from the class were taking pictures of a girl’s a** without her knowing. I remember being scared of them while my friend and I tried to block their view. I was scared they would lash out and hurt me. I know it was irrational; we were in a room filled with people. But it still managed to give me a sense of uneasiness and fear, a pit in my stomach I couldn’t shake.

6

The only person who is dressed appropriately is Tyler’s best friend. He wears black slacks and a black tie, shiny black shoes and a clean pressed white shirt. He sits on a couch in the back of the funeral home just staring at the coffin and all the people in front of it. He isn’t crying though. No one is.

7

We were close when we were younger. At recess we would play kickball and tag. We were almost always in the same class. We were friends, playing together. Growing together. Our lives had crossed paths and tangled up within each other.

8

Tyler has always been skinny. He’s tall, lanky. But as I see him lying here all I could think is how fat he looks. He looks bloated. To be frank, he looks dead. His lips are puffy and wrong. He was always pale, but they must have spray tanned him. He has on false eyelashes and an oversized suit. I focus on this fact instead of the dead body that is lying in front of me.

9

Tyler and I sat next to each other in Sunday school. I don’t think we ever said hello.

10

Not even his family wears black. His father and older brother wear lilac ties. His little sister wears a white dress and a black sash. His mother is still in hospital scrubs with little yellow stars and purple swirls. She must have come straight from work, only her tag wasn't on anymore. I hug them. I bend down to hug his younger sister, always so small. I hug his mother, who has been a family friend all of my life. I hug his father who came into our elementary school to teach us about the police. I hug his brother. His poor brother. Tyler’s killer. All I can think is how this will never leave him. How a pellet gun ruined his life as well as his brother’s.

11

In the 7th grade two girls asked me to break up with Tyler for one of them. I did it, yelled it to him in a game of capture the flag. After I did he and the girls laughed about it. I wondered if the joke was on me.

12

It seemed as if the whole town had come to the wake. I had to wait under storm clouds for over an hour to say my “final goodbyes”. I wonder if he would have cared I showed up at all. I don’t miss him, or think about him every day, or mourn him. His story doesn’t motivate me to live life to the fullest. I’m sure if I died before him, he would think the same.

13

On July 12, 2015, Tyler Alan Cop was shot accidentally by a pellet gun. His brother fired the shot, piercing his lungs and heart as the pellet managed to pass by his ribs. His brother drops the gun, crying and screaming and trying to resuscitate his brother. His mother and father rush outside and called an ambulance. Tyler sits helplessly in a coma until he dies 4 days later. His death was ruled a homicide. His brother now looks off into the distance, not seeing. Thinking maybe. More than a thousand people hug him and give their sympathy. He doesn’t notice. He hugs but he stops feeling, going through the motions. I imagine that is what the rest of his life will be. I imagine I’ll read his obituary sooner than anyone would like to think.

14

For weeks after the wake I have nightmares. I see myself back there, kneeling and pretending to pray. Then Tyler leaps up and grabs at me. I see his eyes, dead and colorless. His suit bunches up, and he growls and fights out of the coffin. There is no one else around, no one to stop him. I struggle then wake up in a cold sweat and decide it’s better to not sleep.

15

When Tyler and I were in the third grade we had the same teacher. We had finished the Titanic unit, and were about to have the annual Titanic day, third graders only. We dressed up as the passengers we had been assigned to. I was in second class, a little girl who was traveling with her father. I wore a white dress with a big pink bow in my hair. Tyler was a first class citizen, an older man traveling alone. He wore an oversized suit. I survived the wreck. He was not so lucky.