CHAPTER ONE
RYAN.........THE BEGINNING.
He was 6 1/2 years old when I first met Ryan Saberon and his mother Elizabeth Weyhknecht. He was brought into the Pedi ICU where I was working at the time. He had coded several times in the ER and was now in the ICU to be monitored and recovered from this devastating event. He was diagnosed with neuroblastoma ( a malignant tumor ) in his abdomen. His belly was huge, his skin pale but he was stable for the time being. Strange but he was the 3rd patient in a week with the same diagnosis. The other was another little boy whose name escapes me, and a little girl named Hannah.
His mother and father I remember were having an argument in the dayroom outside the unit. We didn't pay much attention to that except that they were somewhat disruptive. We weren't quite sure who was right and who was wrong...but it seemed they wanted us to choose sides. They weren't married, and apparently at odds over something. It really didn't matter.
We did however find out that Ryan had been a previous patient sometime before this admission for a burned foot acquired in the bathtub. That kinda set off some bells and whistles which when added to the arguing between the parents made us kinda wonder what was going on at home. All in all, the burned foot turned out to be accidental and was dismissed. Naturally our attention turned to the devastating diagnosis of neuroblastoma.
Within a short time Ryan had surgery, and then was started on chemotherapy. That's when the journey began, or so we thought. ( Liz and I) Ryan became a "frequent flyer" as we called patients were admitted frequently. He received chemo and went home. This went on for a year a 1/2 total. Over that time, Liz and I became very close friends. We had similar interests and found a great friendship in each other. We were both going through some personal difficulties and found comfort in each other. We talked ALOT. As time went on, especially the last six months of Ryan's life we became even closer. We talked of Ryan's treatment...what to do, what not to do...decisions Liz had to make...our personal lives....faith and beliefs. We shared everything with each other. Eventually Ryan go to the point where they "lived" on the unit the last several months. We thought up things to make his days special and bring some joy to this dying child. We would sing songs in his room, read him books, joke with him and he with us. He loved being the practical joker in return. A local songwriter wrote a song for him which was sung to him and he just beamed with joy!
I was at great adventure...it was just after 6pm when I got the call from Pedi that Ryan had passed away. The wake was incredible. He looked like a sleeping doll...So soft to the touch. You never would have occurred to you that he was dead in that coffin. There was a guy roaming around videotaping the entire thing.. I have a very vague memory of him at the time. I'm sure I must have thought it was peculiar but didn't think too much about it.
The next day was the funeral and to the cematary...Woodbine in West Long Branch. It was so melancholy and I my heart just broke for Liz. I just couldn't imagine losing a child.
We all gathered at the repass at a local restaurant Liz had worked at. All the familiar faces were there....including the video man who Liz introduced as her ex-husband Leon.. We talked a little but again I never thought too much about him except maybe to think that was nice of him to be there for her. He had been stepfather to daughter Danielle, and father to her other son Leon IV. All seemed to go well and Liz had a lot of support. She went home with the mom of little Hannah who had also passed away before Ryan had. I didn' t have much contact with her for some time as she had been with Hannah's mother. Eventually she returned home and we talked on the phone quite alot.
CHAPTER TWO
CONNECTED BY WEBTV
Over the year or two before Ryan passed away I was spending alot of time on the computer.....playing games, trying to learn the in's & outs of the computer world, occupying time after work. I was on AOL a little after Christmas, one day and I got an instant message. It went basically something like this........
"Hi Im Leon, Liz's ex-husband. I know you two are friends and I bought her something called WebTV so she could keep connected with you and she could do some writings." I don't remember exactly how he got my aol name, but nonetheless he did. So of course i said,"sure" and he proceeded to connect us and explain online how it worked. From that point on, Liz and I communicated daily...She was writing about her feelings of losing Ryan into little "essays". Then she would send them to me to save for her in case they became lost on her webtv. She wrote for a year....She sent me everyone of those writings. We laughed, we cried. I lived her grief with her...Eventually she made it to a place of some comfort and stopped writing. We continued talking on the phone frequently. We had a memorial that we put together at the cematary. Again Leon was there with the video camera.
Over that year i'd talk on and off to Leon via chat. He'd help me with fixing computer problems and taught me some useful computer programs. He'd give me programs for free. We'd chat about his girlfriend, my husband, kids, life in general. It was all very superficial, but we became "online friends". In the meantime I took Liz on a vacation to the Poconos, spent time visiting her, helped her move and other things friends do.....Ryan was always in our conversation. He would "show up" by sending dimes.... That was a big deal for us. Every time a dime would show up in the most unlikely place we would be on the phone with each other. Over the course of the next year I worked on a website for Liz called the "fly'N Ryan" page. Leon helped with some of the technical things and I became pretty good at building a website. He of course being a computer guru I figured would save the sites and do a backup so nothing could be lost. She was more than ecstatic about the website. I eventually printed out the whole thing for her into a "book form". I was quite proud of my little accomplishment and thrilled I could do something for her to memorialize Ryan and give her some comfort.
Years passed and we kept in touch...that is all 3 of us...Liz, I and Leon.One summer Liz invited me to her son Leon's birthday at his aunt Lee's house in Long Branch. So of course I went. I finally got to really meet the Leon I had been talking to on and off. His girlfriend and his whole family were there. It was a little awkward but we all had a good time. In 2001 Leon's mother became ill with cancer and I got a call from him at work one day asking if I knew of anyone who could give his mother injections weekly. Being he had helped me so much with the website and connecting me online with Liz I volunteered for the job. Their house was only a few blocks from the hospital so it was no big deal. I would go every thursday after work, give her the shot, talk with the family and Leon. This went on until she passed away in Sept 2001. I had become kind of like a part of the family, so I went to the wake and funeral. Poor Leon was a basket case. He was very close to his mom and took her death pretty hard.
Over the next year my marriage had deteriorated to the point of impending divorce. My husband was an alcoholic. I had resigned myself to staying in the marriage however He was becoming emotionally abusive to our kids embarrassing them, saying crazy things to their friends etc. My youngest at the time was 13. I finally felt after he had embarrassed my two older children with their friends, that I wasn't going to let it happen again to the youngest. So I filed for divorce in the fall of 2002. The divorce was final in November of that year.
About a month later Leon who had broken up with his girlfriend sometime earlier that year, called with an extra ticket to the Radio City Christmas Show which he was taking his son to and asked if I would go. So I said sure, why not. After that we started spending time together for the next year. On December 6, 2003 he asked me to marry him. I said yes. Funny because I said i'd never get married again. One year later on Christmas eve 2004 we got married.
CHAPTER 3
LIFE WITH LEON
I'll never forget the day I told Liz I was dating her ex-husband. We were talking on the phone and i told her. She laughed sooo hard. Here I was, one of her closest friend who had once asked her "how do you pronounce that name Weyhknecht"? And now.....a few years later we share the same last name! An even bigger thing is i became her son's stepmother! I always loved that she would tell me that she could never ask for a better "other mother" for her