Taonga: Pipi Cafe's Alexandra Tylee shares a bittersweet memory

Alexandra Tylee, the owner of Pipi cafe in Havelock North, with the teddy bear she had made for her son Zeus. He died at the age of three months in a cot death 21 years. Photo / Warren Buckland

Pipi Cafe's Alexandra Tylee shares a bittersweet memory.

I studied Greek goddesses at university and always felt a strong attachment to Artemis. So I decided if I ever had a girl, that's what I'd name her. When the pregnancy scan showed it was a boy, I said to [then-husband] Sanjay, "What about Zeus?" And it stuck.

We were living in Wellington and I ordered a teddy bear for him through Kirkaldie & Stains from a woman who made lovely old-fashioned English bears – like Sebastian Flyte's in Brideshead Revisited. When Zeus died of cot death, Sanjay wrote our son's name on its foot. He would have been 21 last Boxing Day.

He only lived for three months but Zeus was really "there" right from the beginning – an engaged, strong personality from the start. And, being half-Indian, he looked different. He was really dark, while my three other sons were all blond. Harry [15] and Louis [12] never met Zeus but he's a big part of their lives. They talk about him and feel he's their brother.

All the energy from the way I felt about Zeus went into Pipi, which I opened in Greytown soon after he died. Working day and night meant I didn't have to think too much. I didn't know where to put the feeling of wanting to care for a child and it helped being able to pour that into the restaurant and the customers.

When you divorce, you lose connection to whole bits of your life. I don't often see people these days who actually hung out with Zeus. The teddy bear is from that time. It's a good memory - and it's also tough. Grief doesn't get easier; that feeling never goes away. But you want to remember and I want to be reminded.

I think Zeus has taught me a lot. I'm a different person because of him – probably a better person. It's like the world stops at that point and then starts again, but it's different and nothing else can be as bad. I'm a lot more empathetic now, because you just don't know what other people have had to go through. It takes you right back to what's really important.

I'm 56, so there's no chance of an Artemis for me now. But my oldest son Henry, who's 29, told my niece he hoped one day he'd have a little girl for me, which I thought was very sweet.

— as told to Joanna Wane

Alexandra Tylee moved home to Hawke's Bay and opened a new Pipi Cafe in Havelock North with her husband Chris Morris in 2005. She recently released cookbook for children, Egg and Spoon, illustrated by Giselle Clarkson (Gecko Press, $39.99), and has written a picture book, If I Was a Banana.