Hope After Loss: The Lewis Family's Journey to Healing

“There is hope after loss.”

The Lewis family is proof of that.

Regina and Jerry Lewis, who have been married for almost three decades, were married on June 9, 1995. Regina and Jerry have three children, Megan Collins, who is 28; Paige, who is 25; and Tyler, who passed away at 17 years old. Jerry was a truck driver for 20 years, while Regina was a stay-at-home mom.

Once their children were all in school, Regina began college at Lindsey Wilson where she became a licensed counselor. While working on her master’s degree, Regina began working for a residential facility for women with substance abuse disorder and later at a residential facility for teenage boys with substance abuse disorder.

Regina then encouraged Jerry to go to college after he made the decision to step away from trucking. Jerry graduated from nursing school in May 2017 and then he quickly began work in the behavioral health field at Baptist Health Corbin.

Regina and Jerry’s son, Tyler, was the youngest of their three children. His parents called him an “old soul.”

“To us, he was very special,” Regina said of Tyler.

“He loved ‘60s music—he would have fit right in with the hippie era,” Jerry said. “He loved The Beatles, he loved The Doors.”

Tyler also had a fascination with outer space, particularly he loved Neptune because “Neptune is always cold and it’s the furthest away from all the other planets,” which is what Tyler told Regina when she asked why Neptune was his favorite of all the planets, something that Regina said made her feel sad looking back.

“Tyler always put on the persona that he knew he wasn’t going to be here forever—he just did, which was scary, but we just didn’t pick up the cues,” Jerry said. “Tyler came to us one night and he wanted a tattoo and I told him in our house, you have to be 18 and he said ‘what if I don’t make it to 18?’ and I said ‘you’re going to make it to 18, everybody makes it to 18.’ I think he wanted to live the most that he could and do everything that he could in a small frame of time.”

“He wanted to live 100 miles an hour,” Regina said. “I was like ‘Tyler, you are young, you have all the time to do these things you want to do but when you are older.’ He told me ‘I want to live and I want to experience everything right now.’”

Tyler was a jokester, as he was always cutting up with his friends and family. The Lewis' later found out that Tyler was often the friend everyone leaned on when they were struggling, something they heard from several of Tyler’s former classmates following his death.

“Tyler was a typical teenager—giving his parents all kinds of heck,” Regina said.

At 13 years old, Tyler’s parents found out that he had gotten involved in substance abuse.

As a substance abuse counselor, Regina was shocked to find out about Tyler’s substance abuse and even more shocked when Tyler expressed to his parents that he was suffering from depression. But with Regina and Jerry both in the mental and behavioral health field, the pair were quick to get Tyler into therapy and on the right medication.

“For me, being a counselor, I was like ‘OK, we’ve got a plan,’” Regina said. “We got him into counseling and on medication and thought things were going to get better but even though he was on depression medication, he still used. It was really rough back and forth, him just being a teenager and wanting to do what he wanted to do, of course.”

Despite his struggle with depression, Tyler was a hard worker. He started working at 15 years old because he wanted to earn his own money.

At 16 years old, his parents decided to send Tyler to the Appalachian Challenge Academy, a 22-week military-based residential program that focuses on education and character development. While at the academy, Tyler continued to receive counseling.

When Tyler returned home from the Appalachian Challenge Academy, he returned to his normal activities, including counseling with his regular therapist.

It was August 22, 2017—a normal day for the Lewis family, the day after the solar eclipse that swept across the United States. Tyler had stayed home from school that day as he had been to the doctor with a sinus infection the day prior.

“It was a Tuesday, and I was supposed to be working a long week at the hospital, but something happened and I was off that day,” Jerry said, recalling that he went to Tyler’s room to ask him if he would like to go with him to the grocery store to find something to cook for dinner, something Tyler and Jerry enjoyed doing together. Jerry was surprised to find Tyler’s door was locked.

“I started knocking on his door, but he didn’t answer, so I got a butter knife to try and open his door,” Jerry said. “So, I opened it and I looked around and he wasn’t in there. Something just didn’t feel right. I looked on the bed and on the bed was a blue folder, just a regular folder, and it said ‘I’m sorry, I love you guys. Please forgive me.’ So, I thought ‘well, he’s ran away.’”

Jerry, who could easily recount every minute of that dreadful day, said that something just clicked and he went to look for an old gun that Jerry had kept in the bottom drawer of his dresser, but it was nowhere to be found.

“Panic set in,” Jerry said. “But I had no idea where Tyler could be.”

Jerry called Regina, who was at work, and asked her to come home quickly as a search party began looking for Tyler. Regina said a friend who was at their house at the time knew of a spot Tyler would often go to sit and think, so that friend made the drive alone to a nearby location looking for Tyler.

“We heard the ambulance,” Regina said, as the Lewis family’s world was turned upside down.

“It was the absolutely, positively worst night of our lives,” Jerry said.

Tyler didn’t immediately pass away, he was rushed to the hospital and then later sent to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington where he passed the following day, allowing his family a rare opportunity to say their final goodbyes.

“We were really fortunate in that way, because a lot of parents don’t get that, they don’t get to say their goodbyes,” Regina said.

But then, the Lewis family was left with the immeasurable grief of losing their "Neptune," something that was etched onto the headstone for their 17-year-old deceased son.

“High blood pressure is known as the silent killer but really depression is too, it just eats away and eats away at somebody’s mentality,” Jerry said. “We’re just one of many sets of parents out there that could tell this same story. Maybe not the same details, but we share this story with so many parents across the United States.”

Jerry, who had already suffered a tremendous amount of grief throughout his life including the loss of his father when Jerry was just 11 years old, the loss of his former wife, Judy, who passed away in a car crash in October 1993 and then, in April 1995, Jerry suffered through the loss of his three-year-old son, Justin, who ultimately succumbed to injuries sustained in the ’93 crash. Jerry also lost his mother in 2013.

“That crushing blow of losing someone you love instantaneously, you do have to develop coping skills whether they are positive or negative to get you through that time,” Jerry said. “Another thing you have to develop, which is sad, but it is a hard shell. 

“Tyler’s death was absolutely, positively devastating but because I was able to wrap my brain around the situation that logically I still had to live and because of that and because of my family and my faith, I was able to have the strength to get through those days.”

Every year, on the anniversary of his death, on birthdays and on holidays, the Lewis family relives the pain of losing Tyler and the events of that dreadful day.

“It is the most tragic thing for a parent to have to go to the cemetery on Christmas and on Thanksgiving and on their child’s birthday and that’s where you have to visit them for the rest of your life,” Jerry said.

Now, the couple has dedicated their lives to reminding others just how precious life really is.

Regina and Jerry chose to turn their grief into an opportunity to support other families going through similar grief, while hoping to prevent others from experiencing a loss like their own through Healing Haven, a mental health facility offering counseling services to children as young as four years old up to senior adults who need help working through substance abuse, grief, trauma, couple’s therapy, anger management, and help to treat anxiety, depression, bipolar and other disorders.

“We knew we wanted to give back to our community,” Jerry said. “We love London, we love Laurel County and we wanted to give back. The only way we could do it, we felt, was to do it this way, because I think we were called to do this.”

Five years after Tyler’s death, the couple leased the building the organization now resides, with the help of a benefactor who believed in Regina’s dream. After lots of blood, sweat and tears, Healing Haven opened its doors to its first clients in February 2023.

Healing Haven is made up of three counselors, including Regina, who are all related or close to the family and who have all experienced loss similar to Jerry and Regina. Jerry prescribes psychiatric medication to his patients at the facility and their daughter, Megan, works as a receptionist/care coordinator.

For Regina and Jerry, their work at Healing Haven has never been about the money but about helping others in memory of their son.

“You will find healing here,” Jerry said. “It’s all in the name—this is the place you come to get healing. We will work with our clients to get them through the toughest times of their lives, because we’ve been through the toughest time of our life. It’s broken people helping broken people.”

If there is one thing Regina and Jerry hope people will take away from their story it is that there is hope after loss. And the Lewis family believes that to be true, as they continue to experience life’s joys, including their four-year-old granddaughter, Aubrey, and are awaiting the birth of their first grandson due in August, seven years following the death of their son, Tyler.

“Don’t give up,” Jerry said. “Remember that you are not alone.”