Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Three years ago today...

My life came to a screeching halt. Everything that had been true about my life ceased. What was left was an empty shell that I would hardly recognize.

It's been a hard day but it wasn't as hard as last year or God forbid the one before that.

I miss them all every single day.  But I don't cry as much.  I still see Brian in crowded streets sometimes and still hear his voice in my head sometimes like he's right next to me.  At times my arms still ache for that baby.

I don't stare at their pictures and feel comfort anymore.  Their pictures now have begun to make me sad instead.  Though Paxton is still the wallpaper on my phone.  So I see him several times a day and I can't see ever changing it.  

I realized yesterday that Paxton has been gone longer than he lived. I've been without him longer than I had him with me.  That made me sad because I worry now that I will start to forget his face, his silly squeal, the feel of his tiny hand in mine, his soft wispy hair, his funny little toes that crossed over one another like they were too crowded for his tiny feet. I fear that I will forget that cute little face as he slept with the yellow and  blue pacifier I grew to know so well.

Kara and everyone else thought he was too old to still have his "Binkies" and that they should have been taken from him. And of course they were right, I'd have never let one of my own children take one that long but by this time I'd figured out how fast they grow up and go away and it kept him a baby just a little longer. Brian also knew how fast they grew up and he just couldn't take it from him and though it was totally unlike me, I was glad he couldn't.

We started a Memory Garden for them back in May. We hoped to be done by today but surgeries and life got in the way so maybe by Christmas. I bought a woodpecker made from repurposed metal tools and odd parts - so just like Brian and Paxton loved birds so it seemed right.  I bought a big corrugated metal butterfly that I thought suited Kara and hung it on the fence. And I have planted her favorite hosta there. Problem is it is all in the shade and very little will thrive there without sun but hosta will so that is good.  Donald has worked really hard on it and it is beautiful.

I pictured it kind of peaceful and a little formal looking but it has taken on a life of its own and it will be more "them" and they were not formal. She was artsy and modern.  He was eclectic and loved recycled metal art and homemade anything.  Those were hard styles to mix but they were both fun and whimsical so that is what we will go with. Paxton? Easy - cars.  Motorcycles, buses, trucks, trains anything with wheels.

It has been a hard three years and I'm praying that this will be the year we turn the corner and start to heal.  I know we will never stop missing them. I know we will never "get over" this and just get on with life but I pray it will get better for all of us. I pray for Beauty from Ashes. For purpose.  For healed hearts and healed lives. For hope.

I pray peace for my daughter and my son, my husband and my grandchildren. I pray for Kara's mom and dad, her sister and her brother and peace for them --for all of us.




Sunday, August 13, 2017

Three years and still no answers

We are quickly approaching the third anniversary and to be honest I had expected things to have gotten way better.


I had expected to be able to have the good memories now overtaking the bad at least most of the time.  I had not expected to still not know what happened.  I had not expected to be "stuck" in a constant loop of still dreaming up scenarios and trying to figure out some kind of logical explanation for what has no logic.  Instead of accepting what we have as the truth -- I am in the loop going back over and over and over with a different person as the culprit and building out the scenario that would fit that person being the shooter.  While the all out meltdowns have subsided, an overwhelming sadness has settled permanently over me and it still dominates my thoughts most all day --everyday.


Every movie or TV show I try and watch turns into a comparison to our story or a lesson in investigative process - this happened in the show - could that have been what happened?  Every show seems to run across my mind as another possible scenario to flesh out and see if I can make that theory work. 


I want to retire but I'm afraid to; afraid of how I will spend my days without the distraction of work and the responsibility to get up and get there.  Without a reason - would I even get dressed?  I have no hopes, no dreams, no plans and no purpose in life.  I don't think retiring in this frame of mind would be a good move.  I know I need help - counseling - medication - something to help me gain perspective and help me to heal.  I've done everything I know and to no avail.


I keep being told to let go of "what" happened.  Searching may lead to some answer that I think is actually worse than what I have.  I don't think that is possible.  What I have is misery.  It is Nothing - nothing believable or logical.  Even the story we have, as bad as it is would - if it could be made logical to me, would be better than this --this  fruitless effort of trying to make the story match the person I knew for 41 years.  But that brings us to my second big issue with all this.  This whole things does not fit with the God I've always known either.  So my life is in constant deep confusion.  Everything is upside down.  I have no logic and no constants and no foundation.


I am a female left-brain thinker.  Logic rules my world.  I can live with a lot of things - chronic pain, aging, unfairness, a world that is falling apart, hard work, thankless people, financial insecurities but the one thing my mind cannot deal with is a complete lack of logic.


Things in life are just logical to some degree.  It is like the laws of nature.  Gravity.


And while there could be a logical explanation where Brian is concerned if someone else was involved. That could be logical.  But there is no logical explanation for the fact that it absolutely did happen and there just seems to be no reconciling "that" with the God I know either. 


I need the truth.  I am consumed by the inconsistencies of all of it.  Literally consumed.  There is no "processing" what makes no sense. 


And yet as I've been told there is not always a guarantee of logic in everything in life.  People are not always logical.  Drive-by shootings are not logical.  Drug addicts are not logical.  Drunks are not logical.  Teenagers are not logical and I know all of this and yet my brain is in a tailspin trying to put a puzzle together with all the wrong pieces.  And what I have is exactly that - all the wrong pieces. 


I have a picture of a man who adored his children for 21 years; A man that loved even his blatantly unfaithful wife so much so that her leaving left his life in ruins for over 12 years.  A man that never exhibited jealously; a man that had struggled through years of financial devastation, loneliness, abandonment, losing his children, his wife, his home - and spent 12 years bowing to another man's demands in order to be able to see his children.  He sat back quietly and handed over his hard earned money, the money supposed to be for his children and watched as they bought drugs with it while he could not even hardly live.  He lived through the worst life has to throw at you and was now finally past that.  His children now grown and on their own, his money now his own, he had a new beautiful wife eleven years younger than him.  She was a good mother; a good life partner; a good wife.  He had a new miracle baby boy that he adored; a new home that would be totally paid for in five years with a payment he could afford.  He had two paid for vehicles.  He worked for himself and made  his own hours, worked when he wanted to and made good money.  His life - finally coming together for the first time since he met his first wife at 17 years old.  And now?  Now he decides to get up in the middle of the night and kill his family and himself?  No.  Absolutely No.


Pieces to a puzzle that just do not fit.  These pieces do not add up to that picture.  And that will not go in my head and just be accepted as truth.  Doesn't look like truth, sound like truth, smell like truth.  I knew him for 41 year before that night.  Those 41 years have to account for something.  24 years I watched him struggle through many, many times that may have brought someone to desperation and yet it didn't.  But I am supposed to believe that for absolutely no reason that anyone could ever find - he suddenly does this?