I find it so hard to believe that exactly six years ago I spoke to my son for the very last time. Hard to believe all of those words. Six years. My son. Last time. Still today those words defy reality.
I have of course played back in my head that conversation hundreds of times over the past six years. Looking for clues. Looking for evidence that proves my cause for disputing these findings. Treasuring the normalcy and lightness of it. Replaying his voice; the tone, his inflections, his laugh, his concern. Clinging to every word. Hanging onto to every memory of it. Today six years later when I can barely remember what I did an hour ago - I can recite that conversation almost word for word.
As I write this one hour and a half ago I stopped what I was doing and looked at the clock at the exact time I made that final call. Like some force pulling me. Just like still waking in the middle of the night like I did at exactly 4:00 A.M. Saturday morning the 23rd of August 2014 in a fit of tears without knowing why. To this day I still periodically wake at precisely 4:00 A.M. sometimes I just look at the clock and realize why I awoke I make a mental note of it and go right back to sleep. Other times I lay awake with them on my heart and do not - can not go back to sleep. It isn't everyday anymore but it is still more often than not.
Still six years later they all have their days with me. Some days I will just sit and look at pictures of Paxton all day and cry on and off. Think of the funny little things he did or said and laugh as if he were in the other room. Other days are Kara's days. I think about her all day long. I spend time appreciating what she was to me. How because of her I was able to have the relationship I did with him. She was so unselfish with him. She allowed me to have the sweetest relationship and the gift of loving him. I think of what a great mom she was and how calm and easy she taught him. I watch videos to hear her voice. Then there are "Brian days" and if I'm honest there are more of them. He was after all my child and I had a 41 year history with him. I find that on his days I pick certain era's in his life and just relive those days. Like thinking about different things he did or said say when he was three. On another such day I will have a reminder of something he did at maybe 14 and then I will start thinking of all the things I can remember about the time he was 14. His first school dance with his first real crush. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, red tie. I remember thinking what a grown up outfit for such a little boy. A very small 14 year old that looked all of 10.
Ahh Celeste. His crush. How he carried a torch for that little girl. He was like that though. Very like me in that. He too, was one to hang on to those that mattered to him. He was very sentimental and did not easily let go of a relationship. And he was about 13 when he met Celeste and was still secretly in love with her until the day he married though he never saw her but once after we moved.
But once he married all of his love and attention went to his wife and children. Though he was way too young he handled it like a trooper. He loved being married and loved being a dad better than anything in the world. Even when she was clearly running around on him, he never mentioned it to any of us. I knew he was upset about something but his loyalty to her would never let him say a word against her.
He spent a lot of time with us and I was shocked when after she was openly seeing someone else, had filed for divorce and asked him to leave - he finally told us all she had been doing for over a year. How she had been leaving every night when he came home from work and not returning until 4 or 5 in the morning --totally wasted. How he had been working all day to come in to a filthy house, no dinner and out the door she would go leaving him to bathe the kids and get them to bed and then sit all night and wonder where his wife was. How their four year old son told him about her friend "D" that had come to spend the night every night while he was away on a business trip to N.J. for a week.
She had actually once left two years before, we learned later she was having an affair with her boss. She came back claiming she wanted to work things out. She insisted he buy her a new car and put it in her name. She put in to buy a new house and then she turned up pregnant with their daughter all within a few months of agreeing to come back. Their daughter was just nine months old when he found out about "D". Shortly thereafter he found out she was pregnant again but this time he knew the baby was not his. He was hurt. Devastated. I begged him to get a lawyer and fight for custody of his children. He absolutely refused. Saying "Mom, how could I do that to my wife! I cannot take her children away from her and I cannot take them away from their mother." He loved her still. He wanted her back regardless and he fell into a deep depression for over two years.
She married D. just a few weeks after their divorce was final and she and D. spent the next several years until they divorced - tormenting his life away. Controlling him with threats to keep his children from him or saying she'd turn them against him. On his weekend to have them she called constantly and tried to control every moment of his visitation. She bossed him and told him what he could and could not do with his children with threats that it would be the last time he saw them if he didn't comply. She extorted about $80,000 from him on top of his already generous child support by beating him down and telling him what a horrible father he was because he wouldn't pay for them all to take trips to Disney or California or help pay for them a new van. He ended up in bankruptcy, he couldn't even live on what she left him. He never got a vacation. He never got to take his kids anywhere but he faithfully paid for "their" trips all over. He financed hers, D's and five children's vacations for several years. He found out years later he'd been financing their drug habit as well. They were both heavily on drugs and D. had even sent his 11 year old son into a crack-house to buy drugs for them. She gave her 16 year old son Xanax and then when he got caught with it at school she acted as if she was mother of the year and sent him to a drug rehab.
After the kids got old enough to tell him some of what had gone on he lived consumed with guilt for not trying to take custody of the kids and sparing them the hell they lived in that set the tone for the near ruination of their lives when they hit their teen years. They had been exposed to everything.
She left D. but not before she gave birth to two more children - one mixed race - after her husband had had a vasectomy claiming at five months pregnant that she'd been raped in the parking lot of a Publix by a black man. And when she left she was pregnant again with husband number three's baby. He came from a well off family and she took them for all she could before she left him. And shortly thereafter came baby number seven and husband number four and as I understand it - she now has husband number five.
She is a textbook psychopath and the nicest person you'd ever meet.
And no one was happier than I was when Brian married Kara because I knew Kara was not the kind of person to sit back and let her run their life or allow her to continue to extort money from them. And she did exactly as I expected. She put a stop to it first thing. For the first time in over twelve years he was somewhat free from that psychopath. The only thing that scared me was that Kara believed that she was her friend. And she is the most manipulative person I've ever known and I was so afraid of what trouble she might cause her because Kara had stopped her gravy train.
And weirdly after all the years of torment and bad blood between them and after being divorced for eighteen years, she was johnny on the spot at the scene of the crime from her home over 60 miles away just a short time after the kids were notified. Chatting up the police; there for the TV cameras; there to talk with the neighbors. She would not miss an opportunity to be in the middle of the drama. weeks later I was told by the investigating officers that she had been calling their office regularly asking for updates about the investigation. He asked me who she was. I was livid. Then she was the first one at the Memorial Service and the last one to leave. They couldn't even close the church long after the service was over because she would not leave.
Afterward I remember the most intense anger I've ever known. Screaming to the top of my lungs and throwing things and being in an uncontrollable rage --at her. All the years of her torment of him culminated in the worst rage I've ever experienced. I wasn't mad at God. I wasn't mad at him even though they claimed he was responsible. I was mad at his biological father and her --for all the hurt they had caused him in his life.
I have no anger now I will wait on the Lord and let Him sort out the truth and get justice for us. I hold no grudges.
And all of this makes the scenario the police built even more ridiculous. After all she put him through for all those years and growing to hate her as he did - he didn't kill her. So why on earth would he have killed the beautiful wife that he loved and the child he adored?
I'm better but there is still a hole in my heart the size of Texas that will never ever fill. I miss them all every single day but I find peace in the fact that the days of seeing them again are getting close. Very close. And I rest in that knowledge.
