Two-and-a-half classes of dressed-up Grade 7 students filled an Albion elementary hallway outside the gym on Thursday morning, some boys sporting ties, a few girls accessorizing their dresses for leaving day with tiaras, all waiting for the ceremonial end of elementary school.
The last of the parents filed into the gym.
“Will you wear a pin for Tyler?” Diana Wismer asked a couple.
“Tyler?” asked the husband.
“He was the boy who was in the longboarding accident,” whispered the man’s wife.
He nodded acknowledgement.
The couple both took one of the little wooden stars, with the initials T.G., for Tyler Galloway, and left a bill in a jar.
As parents and students filed into the gym under a balloon arc, with baby pictures of all the Grade 7s set to music on a big screen, there was a table set up with a picture of Tyler next to the jar, and Wismer and her husband Dave made sure everyone got into the gym.
Tyler, 12, couldn’t be with his classmates as they left elementary school together for the last time.
He remains in hospital after colliding with a car while longboarding near his Maple Ridge home on June 8.
But his mother, Gail Marsden, made it to the leaving ceremony, the last one to enter the gym.
“You made it,” someone said to her.
“We’ll see how long I last,” she smiled back.
When the ceremonies were over, if not before, she would go back to Vancouver Children’s Hospital, to stay with Tyler.
After his longboarding accident, she spent four days straight in hospital with him. Finally, when it became apparent he would survive his injuries, the nurses convinced her to go home.
Now she goes to see him every morning, staying into the night.
“I think he can hear me, so I talk to him all day long.”
Marsen said her son did not suffer multiple broken bones, and was never on life support. He was on a ventilator for the first five days, to help him breath. But he has since been doing that on his own. He suffered a broken collarbone, and broke a bone under his eyebrow.
His main wound is a traumatic brain injury. He was put into a medically induced coma, but is out of it now.
He can’t walk or talk.
“His eyes follow me,” said Gail. “He can hear me.
“We don’t know how much he understands, if he knows where he is.”
There is no prognosis. Tyler’s brain simply has to repair itself, and the process is expected to take more than a year.
Gail sometimes gets her son into a wheelchair. His friends come to visit regularly, and every other day someone comes to check on Tyler.
“The kids at Albion have been amazing,” she said.
Tyler’s accident has been on them, though.
“They’re all struggling,” said Diana Wismer, whose son Zach is close friends with Tyler, and who has been visiting him in hospital.
“He’s well-loved by his group of peers,” she said of Tyler. “Everyone is pulling for him.”
His teacher Paul Thompson called Tyler “a sweetheart of a kid,” an athletic soccer and ball hockey player who also referees.
“He lives for athletics,” Thompson added. “He is a good-hearted kid, always has a gleam in his eye, and can be a bit mischievous. He’s well liked.”
That is reflected in the support the school community has given his family.
A week ago, Albion elementary had a graduating celebration that included a round of golf and dinner, as well as a 50-50 draw to support Gail and her other children.
She runs a business, selling puppies and running a boarding kennel. But that has been put on hold.
The winner of the 50-50 raffle donated the money back.
“I’m so grateful for how great the community has been, and how supportive everyone has been,” Marsen said.
That was evident again at the Grade 7 leaving ceremony.
“He’s going to be okay,” said his mom, “because he’s such a fighter.”
