One of Beth Shaw’s greatest joys was packing her son Tyler’s lunchbox.
Every night, she’d fill the cooler with the 20-year-old’s favorite things: a turkey sandwich, pretzels, cheese and pepperoni slices, crackers and bottles of water.
Then, she’d leave the meal in the family’s mudroom by Tyler’s work
boots, so he could pick it up at 5:30 a.m. before he left for his construction job
in Bow.
Beth’s husband, Chris, often teased her for still packing her son’s lunch, but she would always laugh it off.
“I told him, ‘There will be a day when he won’t be here, and I won’t be able to do that anymore,’ ” she said.
But Beth thought that moment
would come when Tyler moved out of the family’s Concord home, not because of his death.
Tyler was killed on Monday near
Exit 1 off Interstate 89 in Bow when his truck was hit by another vehicle that failed to stop at the end of the off-ramp.
Now, Tuesday’s lunch is still sitting in the family’s mudroom, and Beth said she can’t bring herself to move it or throw it away.
“I’m still waiting for him to come home,” she said.
For Tyler’s family, processing his loss has not been easy.
“When you wake up, it’s the first thing you think about,” Beth, 49, said. “And once it crawls into your mind, it just consumes you.”
The Shaw family misses their loud, funny and caring kid. They each want to experience one of his great, big bear hugs again.
Chris said he keeps expecting to hear the rumble of Tyler’s diesel-run Chevy Silverado coming up the drive.
Tyler bought the car about a year ago, and he loved to ride around Concord for hours listening to crime or sports podcasts, his family said.
“We always felt good because he was in a big truck and it was going to protect him if there was an accident,” Chris said.
State police are still investigating the crash that killed Tyler.
Tyler was driving home Monday night about 9 p.m. after an evening playing video games at a friend’s house in Bow. Moments later, his car was hit on Logging Hill Road.
Joseph Leonard Jr., 35, of Derry was driving south on I-89 in a 2017 Nissan Altima when he took the exit and failed to stop at the end of the ramp, police said.
The crash on Logging Hill Road caused Shaw’s truck to roll over onto the driver’s side, partially ejecting him, police said.
Bow police Chief Margaret Lougee said Exit 1 has been a problem area for some time because of the blind spot near the fork on Logging Hill Road, where there are a lot of near accidents.
But Lougee said in this case, the accident was caused by the driver’s failure to stop more than anything else.
“A second later, and the car would have continued on the road or crashed somewhere else,” Lougee said. “Tyler was in the wrong place in the wrong microsecond.”
The last few days have been a waiting game for the Shaws.
The family wanted to see Tyler right away, but the medical examiner’s office said his body had to be taken for an autopsy to determine cause of death.
They all did their best to stay positive in the meantime.
Tyler’s longtime girlfriend, Brianna Seidel, 25, said she’s been trying to do activities to honor Tyler, like going for long walks at the Conservation Center like she used to do with him a few times a week. She went to Turtletown Pond a few days ago, where they used to spend hours fishing together.
Tyler’s 17-year-old brother Josh thinks that’s how Tyler would like people to remember him.
“He wouldn’t want us to be sad, he’d want us to try to celebrate him and remember all the good times,” Josh said.
Tyler’s body was released late Wednesday afternoon, and before he was cremated Friday, the family got a chance to say goodbye.
Tyler suffered such serious injuries in the crash that the funeral home had to cover him with a quilt so they could sit with him, talk to him and touch him over the fabric.
“Being able to feel his arms and his hands and just hold him helped a lot,” Beth said. “I hated the thought of him there by himself.”
The Shaws cant help but feel that their son was robbed of his future.
“It’s just so senseless that 10 seconds one way could take away 50 years of a person’s future,” Beth said.
Beth said she felt like Tyler was just realizing his potential when he was killed.
Tyler was a talented young man – he could make friends anywhere, he was athletic, accountable and ambitious, but he lacked confidence at times, his father said.
“He was sometimes unsure of himself, and he felt like he wasn’t going to be successful,” Chris said. “He didn’t give himself enough credit.”
Beth said she found a notebook in Tyler’s lunchbox a few weeks
ago that had a list of 29 goals – like to build better relationships, become a plumbing master, move to Montana and be a good father one day.
Tyler’s family said he loved Montana, the place where his best friend Nate went to college. He had visited there twice, and planned to move out there with Brianna this summer.
The past few months he had been talking non-stop about hunting elk, renting an apartment with his girlfriend and hiking in the mountains.
The Shaws don’t know where to go from here, or what might make them feel better about Tyler’s death.
They don’t know if it’s seeing a traffic light installed at the scene, or if it’s watching the man who hit Tyler go to prison. Maybe it’s just having people read Tyler’s story and remember not to take life for granted, Beth said.
“There’s got to be some type of justice, some type of change,” Beth said.
Tyler Shaw’s celebration of life will be on Friday, May 11, starting at 5:30 p.m. at the Grappone Center at the Courtyard Marriott in Concord. A gathering to share memories of Tyler will follow in the same location.
(Leah Willingham can be reached at 369-3322, lwillingham@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @LeahMWillingham.)