Strange

I had the weirdest exchange take place between me and a "friend" from church the other day. I mistakenly assumed a church friend might be one to call when you needed a little support.  So I texted and told her I almost called her the day before because I was so down and really needed someone to talk to. Her answer left me feeling far worse than before I contacted her.

This was how she responded:

I don't mind listening "but" I hesitate to give suggestions.  I have found that when someone talks, their perception is what is told.  Facts can only be learned by carefully worded questions.  I'm not smart enough for that besides, I'm too empathetic."

Huh?  

She offered no further explanation.  I concluded that she assumed I was going to talk about the kids.  She "supposedly" does not know what happened just that I lost them tragically.  I have never told her -  I'd also bet many thousands of dollars that she actually does know.

So what exactly do you say to this?  I assumed, A. She DID NOT want to talk to me about any problem, either physical, spiritual, emotional or otherwise.

So to just back out of any plea for help, and let her gracefully off the hook I said "Not that I really expected anyone could actually help.  I just needed a friend I guess."  

She said: "I understand." 

 

THAT ended the text exchange.

Not another word; not - Hey, I'm your friend.  I may not have all the answers and I may not can help at all but I can listen and be there for you.  

Nope.  Just "I understand."  No. It is I that understands.  Completely.

It absolutely devastated me.  I felt like she had just slapped me cold in the face.  I really did.  I cried and  have been upset by it for days.  And my first instinct was to quit the church as crazy as that sounds.   

Six years later - Really?  Again, I might as well have called the suicide prevention hotline and been put on hold!

Six Years Ago...

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.

 

The Fifth Anniversary...

Has come and gone and I'm glad August is in the rear view mirror.  I spent a solid month dreading it because milestones are always hard.  Problem is it isn't just the "day" of the anniversary it is more like the entire month.  I start getting weepy and depressed as July marches toward the end of summer.  And I stay that way until after Labor Day.  But as I've  mentioned August is a month full of significant days so I guess that's reasonable.

This was a milestone I was dreading mostly because it "has" been five years and I am still where I am at FIVE DANG YEARS later!  That alone is depressing.  And in some ways --not all ways but some, I'm worse than I was say three years out.  That I don't understand.  But I'm going to use this five year mark as a goal. The end of this "continuing to get worse" phase.  I am going to get better.  I am.

Still waiting for that "Beauty From Ashes" to show up.  I do get a little discouraged when I read about all that others have gleaned from the journey through loss and grief --even catastrophic loss.  And when I see the beauty from ashes in other people's stories or when I see that God has restored things to others in the wake of their loss because I know that is not possible in my case.  I am not, at 66 years old going to get another son.  I will never have another opportunity to be that close to another baby in my life. My daughter in law is not miraculously going to be replaced by a better, newer model.  So what exactly could "restoration" even look like for me?

I want to be positive.  I really do.  I want to believe things will get better but I can't see beauty from ashes and I can't see anything being "restored" in my life.  Five solid years out I watch and wait expectantly and still the losses continue to pile up.

I'm trying to stay busy.  I am trying to make new friends and create a solid social life albeit the landscape has changed drastically. Seems now I gravitate to those that have had and therefore understand --catastrophic loss. I am still reading non-stop; still searching for that one story that has the positive, happy ending that can give me the secret formula to overcoming this pain and heartache and the magic potion that will help me learn to not just live through this but enjoy living again in spite of this and tell me what steps to take in order to mitigate the steady stream of collateral losses.

I'm trying to do things - things I used to enjoy - looking for a spark that might ignite even a small flame of interest in something again.  I'm making the effort - which is a step forward I know since it was a long time before I cared to even try.

It was a huge step for me to attempt yet again to see a counselor.  Since that first year when I called about twenty with not so much as a single response and the one I did manage to wrangle up could not handle this and decided to just help me deal with the scheduling issues surrounding my sister's care and how to work in "grieving from the tragic loss of three members of my family" between a three hour commute in heavy Atlanta traffic daily to go for 6 to 12 hours a day 5 -days a week in the bone marrow clinic, juggling visits to an endocrinologist, gastroenterologist, pulmonologist in between along with regular trips to the hospital radiology department, dermatologist and respiratory therapist offices for testing or treatments, keeping up with a conglomeration of 28 medications, making sure the house was as germ-free and bacteria-free as possible, planning and preparing meals according to specific guidelines and doing laundry for four people on top of a full time job that I was then having to do at night after everything else was taken care of.  Granted I needed help for that.  But sadly got no help for the elephant or rather Mastadon in the room.

I think I've had maybe as much as five sessions with her and I got a letter about two weeks ago saying she was resigning.  Resigning.

Was it something that I said?

Another Wave...

I have told you of several really weird and unexplainable things that happened early on like the incident with the pendulum on the clock, Siri asking if I wanted to ask her: "Where is Brian?" etc. All of that happened early on and there has been nothing odd or unexplainable since.

However, until a couple of months ago when another weird thing happened.  My phone battery had depleted while I was in the car without my charger and the phone went completely dead.  I had to wait till I got home to plug it in and let it charge a while before it would even boot up.  When it finally did and I picked it up to use it there was an email on the screen as if it had just come in.  I opened the email and it was from --Brian; from five years ago --on his birthday!  It said:

"He's saying: "Here comes another one." He's talking about a wave."

Well this didn't make sense out of context so I had to go back through five years and thousands of emails to find and read the email string that lead up to this to see that he is referring to a video he sent me of Paxton at the beach.  I'd sent him one saying that I couldn't understand what the baby was saying in the video and this email was his answer to that.  But it was just those words:

"He's saying: "Here comes another one." He's talking about a wave."

Well I have referred as have many others to grief coming in waves and I have also referred to this being like a shipwreck with me being overcome by the waves so this was unnerving to say the least.  Here comes another one?  Oh God, I hope and pray not --but let me tell you, it totally rattled me.  I tried to blow it off and try and get on with my day but the weirdness of the fact that out of literally thousands of emails that sit on my email account - an email from five years ago, from my son that died five months after that, on what turned out to be his very last birthday shows up on my phone screen as if it were brand new and unread - was strange enough but "this" being the actual message of that email?  Beyond weird.

Well I finally settled down about it and chalked it up to a freaky weird coincidence when two days later it happened again.  Same deal.  Email shows up on my phone screen like a brand new email.  I open it.  It is from Brian.  Same exact email now a second time.  The following week I get an error message on my screen that said:  "your text could not go through."  Well...I had not sent a text.  I opened the error message and it lead me to the actual text it was referring to... and it was the last text I ever sent to Kara; asking "Are you okay?"  She was not.  I had been texting both of them alternately all morning with no answer and that was my last text to her before I sent someone to the house to check on them.

But again "this" a few months shy of five years ago! And believe it or not - that too, actually happened a second time a week later.  And this past Monday - I got the email from Brian now a third time!  This has never happened with any other emails as long as I have had a smartphone. Never.  And now out of thousands of archived emails - this one email has come up on my screen as if it had just been received - three times! And I have also never had an error message come up like that and did not in fact even get that error message the day or days shortly after I sent it.  But I get it twice almost five years later and within days of the emails from Brian???

That is crazy and I really do not know what to make of it.

You've Got Mail...

Today I got an email --- from Kara.  Someone of course had hacked her old Email from six years ago and there in my inbox blaring at me like it is perfectly normal, is an unnerving email that says it is from "Kara".

This morning while trying to clear up some memory on my new almost full phone, thanks to the fact that I saved every text from my old phone and six hundred pictures and all the spur of the moment videos Kara would send daily,  I was surprised to find a string of texts from Brian that have managed to elude me for a solid year. They were sent from his new work phone and a different number so they had not come up under his name when I had searched for any emails or texts from them. In it he had sent me a picture of, as he put it, "your little monkey" as he was eating breakfast in the Waffle House.  It was taken the weekend before they all died.

So today I sort of heard from all three of them and that made for a very hard day.

We are back home from my "run away" vacation - the distraction that was supposed to keep me from remembering the first anniversary of their death. It did it's job, but I had to come home sometime and our first day home is Sunday --the day Paxton and I always played hide and seek with the couch cushions after we got home from church and Sunday School together.  Then afterwards Brian would call and say: "Hey, how long are you going to be home..." and he and Kara would come by to pick the baby up. So it was typically a day that I usually had play time with Paxton and saw both Brian and Kara and today, in one day, I get an email from her, a new string of texts from him and a picture of Paxton...Meltdown.


These were likely another "gift" but it has been a hard couple of weeks and it just seemed like taunting at the time.

We are getting really good at pretending...

We pretended Thanksgiving was not on Thursday this year and held a “family get-together” on Saturday instead that was definitely not Thanksgiving.  

Then we pretended for some reason -- perhaps a new law went into effect - one that I don't remember ever voting for, like day-light savings time or mandatory insurance -- that required that Christmas be canceled this year.  Maybe it will be on schedule for next year who knows? Congress is still out on that right now.  But for 2014 Christmas was eliminated from the calendar.

I also pretended Paxton was just out of town for his third birthday.  Maybe off to Florida enjoying Disney or Legoland and that is why we did not buy the gifts we'd wanted to give him or have cake and watch him blow out candles or gather around him and sing “Haddy Dirtday” to him. 

Then I had the brilliant idea to actually let Brian’s birthday take place this year.  I decided we would remember him by baking his favorite cake then we would all get together and go out for pizza.  We'd reminisce about him tell funny "Brian stories" laugh and celebrate his life.

That did not work out quite like I’d planned.  

I cried for three solid weeks afterward.

Turns out pretending was working way better for me so I opted to go back to pretending.   And so Easter this year was just another Sunday.  For the first time in twenty years we did not attend Sunrise Service or the fellowship breakfast afterward.  I did not go and help out with the Easter-Egg hunt on Saturday (although I did stuff 180 plastic eggs so as not to be a complete slacker.)  I did not buy a new springy pastel Easter dress but instead rummaged through my closet and dragged out a regular black and tan dress. I raked a comb through my hair, dabbed on some mascara and managed to show up for Sunday-School.  I didn’t even hear the sermon preached during the regular service but chose to keep the nursery instead.  I saw none of my children or grandchildren nor did I, in fact, see any family at all other than my husband that lives there.  The two of us ate lunch out and came back to the rental house early and watched TV till time to go to bed.

I’m going to Memphis to Graceland for Mother’s Day.  I'm pretending to be on vacation...

More life lessons

I have had a difficult time again lately and could not make myself sit down and write.  Really unusual since this has been all that has stood between me and insanity.

The good news is that my sister is doing very well and moved back to her house on the five month anniversary of the kid’s death.  The bad news is that I have come to realize that the "grief-work" I thought I was doing turned out to be "grief-postponed" instead ---it has gotten a toe-hold and has come back with a vengeance.

I am better to some extent and my bad meltdown days are getting farther apart but still some days the darkness completely engulfs me until I don’t feel like I can breathe.  Some days the panic attacks still hit as it still ambushes me as if it is brand new and I am hearing it for the first time. 

Especially this past week because we are finally going to make the move in the direction of selling Brian and Kara’s house.  It has been hanging in limbo for five months.  Every time I would start - I would break down and just could not move forward with it.  The thoughts of losing one more part of them was just too much.

But the bills on it are still continuing and we can’t keep supporting an empty house. The homeowners insurance will run out soon and they will not renew it as it is still vacant.  And the longer it sits vacant the better the chances of vandals coming in and tearing it up.  So as if I didn’t have enough on my heart I now have to dispose of the home they loved. 

The house was bought right after the baby was born.  They brought him home from the hospital there.  It was there he learned to crawl and push a diaper box as he taught himself how to walk.  I can still see him running wild down the hall with a bucket on his head - covering his eyes!  He has ridden his little tractor up and down through the house and pushed a hot wheels car a million miles.  It was there he had his first baby crush on the little girl Alisa next door.  And he had two birthday parties there.  It was the only home he ever knew. 

The thoughts of selling the home that Brian and Kara put their heart and soul and every spare dime into --literally makes me want to throw up. 

Keeping it on the other hand considering that is also where they all died one horrible night –also makes me want to throw up.  There is no good answer and no easy out but the lesser of the two evils seems to be to sell it and get it off of us.  I have never been able to go back in it.  I have never even driven down the street or ever seen it again.  I just can’t.  And in light of that fact, selling it seems like the only option.  But it is heart-breaking to me just the same. 

I’m a hang-on forever kind of person.  I never get rid of anything.  And anytime I do, it is an emotional struggle.  Literally “everything” has sentimental value to me and for two cents I fear I could be a hoarder.  So this is hard on so many levels. 

But I feel another change coming on as I realize I no longer care about anything like I used to.  “Things” are just that –things.  And for the first time in my entire life I feel like I could get rid of every single thing in my house and not care. 

People are all that is important.  The people in your life are really absolutely all that count.  I’ve always known it but not to the magnitude that I do now.  I have always loved and cherished the people in my life but like many others I am blatantly guilty of chronic consumerism - striving and getting, buying and wanting more.  I’ve worked my life away --to buy “stuff”.  Stuff I now wish I could get rid of because it feels like it is weighing me down.  I worked my children’s childhood away and traded my grandchildren’s sweet baby days for a paycheck and a new car.  I was just doing what we all do to "get by" or so I thought at the time and then I looked up one day and they were grown.  I had a house full of useless stuff and my children were grown and gone. 

Paxton was my second chance; my opportunity to get my priorities in order and realize how precious the time was and I tried not to miss a minute.  He was my chance to know and acknowledge and enjoy what was really important in life. 

The day he poured out a $10 Costco sized canister of cinnamon I laughed at the look of “uh oh I’m busted” on his little brown smudgy face.  I thought his little brown feet were hysterical as he stood both feet covered in cinnamon smelling like a homemade apple pie!

That would not have been my reaction 15 years ago.

I used to stop right in the middle of cooking Sunday dinner to crawl in the floor to play chase as he ran and hid behind the sofa or play our favorite game of hide and seek behind the sofa pillows.  He played in my kitchen cabinets with "clean" Tupperware and I turned the TV off at night and rocked him until he got too big and wouldn’t let me anymore.  I enjoyed every single moment of him but even so it made me sad to think about all the time and all the love and all the delight I had missed with all the others while I was working, tired and grumpy. 

There are no do-overs in life.  Make the time you have with those you love count.  Babies don't wait. 

Strength...

I have had two friends in the past week make comments regarding my tremendous level of strength, as it relates to my loss.  I don’t see that I have any strength.  I don’t see that I have any choice.  Believe me if I did, you would not see strength.  If there was anything I could do any perceived strength anyone thought I had would quickly crumble as I begged and crawled to do what ever it took to get them back. 


Though I do not see it as the truth in this case, on some level it does not surprise me. I think in many ways it is the trait I most strive to portray. 

It appears in considering “strength” that I have a lot to say on the subject. Where did it come from? What does it mean?  Is it always necessarily a good thing? 

The strength I propose to portray is a direct result of my childhood.  Weakness in my daddy’s household was not tolerated.  My “strength” if you choose to call it that --was tried by fire almost every day.  Much like a predatory animal --he could literally smell fear.  So weakness in any form was a danger to my very life and the lives of my younger siblings.

We were raised in an abusive, alcoholic home.  My mother, when sober, was the picture of strength and determination.  My father admired that in her and demanded it of the rest of the world and most especially in me as the oldest. 

I was expected to stand up and take whatever he dished out without shedding a tear or showing even a hint of fear.  Any display of weakness brought his personal demons front and center.  He made a concerted effort to sharpen and hone what he called “toughness” in me much like a grinding wheel sharpens an axe.  He put me in terrifying and life-threatening situations to see how I would react without regard to the outcome should I not perform as he expected.  For instance, dropping me in a lake in water two feet over my head and calmly watching as I swallowed a gallon or two of lake water --was his version of "teaching me to swim" or putting me on a huge piece of “running” heavy equipment at ten years old and jumping off leaving me to figure out how to stop it before it plunged headlong off a steep hill mere yards away; or letting me at seven years old steer the family car with everyone's lives depending on my “ability” on the icy snow-covered mountain roads of Alaska.  Would that make you tough -- if you live through it – you bet it would. 

I endured not only physical abuse but mental and emotional abuse that for me was far worse.  I started out as a squeamish little girl with a tendency toward throwing up at the slightest provocation and I thought I was going to literally die when Daddy called me in from playing demanding that I sew up a large gash in his hand with my mother’s sewing kit.  Now he was tough.


Beloved pets were choked unconscious in front of me then tossed aside for dead.  And I watched my baby sister, crippled from polio, be beaten for crying because no one would help her out of her wheel chair and the one and only time I ever stood up to him was when he slapped my baby brother so hard in the face that his two tiny teeth went through his bottom lip. 


Many times I cringed in guilt unable to do one thing as my mother’s blood-curdling screams filled the house as she was locked in the bedroom and beaten bloody.  The one time I picked up the phone to call for help fearing he would actually kill her I was stopped dead in my tracks at the sound of the hammer being pulled back on the loaded .38 caliber pistol being held to my head. A family game of Rook took a weird turn one night when he calmly announced to everyone at the table that he was going to kill me.  Knowing him as I did, I wasted no time asking "why" I just grabbed my 8-month old daughter and took off running as shots rang out behind us.  Life was interesting around our house and I learned early on that “strength” or at least the appearance of strength was a very necessary survival skill.

Strangely enough people take that appearance of strength to mean that I do not suffer like everyone else; grieve like everyone else or feel pain like everyone else.  They assume that I am easily capable of handling anything life throws at me and therefore have no need of help, rest, or comforting. 

What it really means is that I am human just like everyone else but I struggle with my needs alone, bear my grief in silence and cry in a puddle in the bottom of my closet.  And as for handling what life throws at me – what choice do I have?  Against my better judgment – I just keep waking up.

What they might never guess is that the constant “portrayal” of strength is just like when I was a girl, only there to mask any appearance of my true weakness and vulnerability. 

That appearance of strength though makes it difficult for me to admit that I need help or accept the comfort I need.  I have been conditioned to stand tough and never admit that I can't do anything.

That alone makes it difficult I'm sure for others to give me the emotional support I need because on the surface I appear stronger than they do.  And I know this because even in my weakest, most vulnerable moments as I am facing the greatest series of losses one could ever imagine.  When I am barely able to even hold myself upright or put my shoes on the right feet --people still without blinking an eye –tend to lean on me?  At the lowest point in my life when I wonder how on earth I am going to live through this and then why I would even want to --a friend calls to complain to me about what a difficult time she is having with her emotionally troubled daughter.  Another couple confides to me all the trouble they are having with their adolescent son.  And still another calls seeking comfort because he is discouraged and burned out on his job.  All within weeks of the most horrific loss one can suffer; they are calling on me for comfort and support since I "seem to be doing so good”. 

So my strength is actually the cause of my feeling both overwhelmed and emotionally abandoned?

I am learning though through this great loss how to be human; how to be as strong as I am able at that moment which most days just means putting one foot in front of the other and doing what I absolutely have to do.  I am learning to admit my vulnerabilities and accept the help and comfort of others.  I am learning what it feels like to openly cry and even scream in front of others albeit right now just a certain few. 


I find it odd, how in letting my weakness show more than I have ever allowed myself to do, I feel I’m being stronger than I have ever been. 

Christmas – ugh.

As suggested, we chose to change our Christmas tradition this year…we chose not to celebrate at all. 

First time in my entire life although there have been many times I have wanted to just let it slide – I never had the guts.  Fear of disappointing others has kept me from it.  This year everyone was kind of disappointed already so we just let it go. 

No tree.  No decorations.  No children.  No grandchildren.  No extended family.  No Christmas dinner.  No Christmas --period.

I just could not put up a Christmas tree and pull out all of the little handmade Christmas ornaments that the three kids have made over the years reminding me that there are now only two.  I could not pull out of the little wooden toy ornaments that I have been decorating our trees with for most of their lives.  I could not unpack the kids Christmas stockings with Brian’s baby nickname on it –B-B. (The name he called himself when he was little trying to say “Baby”)  The little handprints that Kara made for us with Paxton’s tiny baby hand or his stocking that said Baby’s First Christmas.  The red satin balls that we laugh about every time we pull them out because we are always reminded of the year Brian was five and he was helping decorate the tree and all we had were those red satin balls and he walked around and around the tree and finally in exasperation put it back in the box exclaiming loudly “I can’t find any place for this one!” and picked up another one identical to it and put it immediately on the branch right in front of him.  He was such a goof.

So instead Donald and I sat alone in the house.  Ate a crappy lunch at the Waffle House and came home to a marathon of nauseatingly syrupy Shirley Temple movies.

And 2014 could not just go quietly without hitting us yet again.  On Friday December 19^th, my mother’s oldest sister and the aunt that I was always closest to --passed away at 92 years old. So on the 23^rd of December - four months to the day after the kids died I’m sitting at a funeral.  Saturday December 20^th, my sister’s 56-year old brother in law died unexpectedly – The actual cause of death is yet unknown.  Perfectly healthy 56 year old man woke up with unexplained stomach pain leading to the discovery of systemic sepsis from what they suspect was a perforated bowel and within 48 hours he was gone.

We have had a standing tradition to go and spend New Year’s Eve with my best friend Kathie and her husband.  We would eat dinner out and come back to her house to quietly ring in the New Year and go to bed and then we’d get up New Year’s Day and I would make homemade blueberry waffles for everyone for breakfast and then together we would cook a Traditional Southern New Year’s dinner. 

Her husband usually cooks pork tenderloin on the grill and she and I together do the rest. We enjoy a great dinner together clean up, pack up and head home.  This year, I had originally canceled our visit since I have not really been able to do social things. And I did not want to spoil anyone else’s holiday but she kept saying although she understood if I didn’t – if I felt like I could --even last minute – come on.  I do look forward to that all year long and though I did not want to promise since I didn’t know if I actually “could” I thought maybe if I knew she wasn’t going to a lot of trouble and expense planning it – I could leave it at “maybe” status.   

New Year’s was one holiday I actually wanted to celebrate and asked her if I could muster up what it took to come could we just make the two hour drive to the mountains and have New Year’s dinner at The Dillard House Restaurant.  She was on board and so that was the new plan…now after two more deaths in my family and still yet another week left in this stinking year – I’m terrified to leave home!

I did not really miss having Christmas but have had my usual relapse of the crying spells from being home.  Like I told Donald, it is not so much wondering how I will make it through Christmas but how we will make it through the rest of our lives…

I feel like I am sinking into a dark hole. Not a feeling I was expecting four months later.  I was expecting to have several really hard months each getting easier than the one before and then once I got past those and the first holidays and birthdays etc. I would be safely beyond the danger of depression.  That doesn’t appear to be the case.  Everyone seems to have moved on and begun to get on with their lives again as if nothing has happened and I am back to crying in the toy department.  Not only the toy department but baby clothes, children’s shoes, tools – even the word “tools” as it refers to computer tools on my job, I can’t even channel surf past carpentry or home improvement shows on TV or go by garlic bread sticks, eggnog or pumpkin pie in the grocery store.

I was in Walmart to pick up a few things including food for a pot of soup yesterday and could not see through the tears to get my shopping done.  I was crying down every single aisle; thinking to myself: “I cannot buy him those little shoes.  I can never again buy him these little cartoon pajamas.  I cannot buy him these cars or those trucks.  I cannot get him this new movie.  I can never read him this book or see him in that little hat.  I cannot buy him this cuddly teddy bear to sleep with…”

 I feel like I am losing my mind and I’m quite sure to the occasional shopper I look like it too.

Life lessons about love...

As I've said before, I had dreamed about Paxton before he was even conceived.  When we did not even think Kara could ever carry a baby, I dreamed of seeing and loving him.  Loving him so much it was like no love I’d ever known.  When I awoke I “knew” he was real.  He was not a child I’d just had a dream about – I knew he was going to "be"--in fact, already was.  My love for him was real and I knew absolutely that he was real.

I felt he’d been sent to me by God in that dream and he would be sent to me in real life too.  And because of that I had complete faith in that message and felt secure in loving him with complete abandon. 

Up to then, I was very guarded about how much I allowed myself to let go and love someone else’s child.  I’d been torn apart in the past loving children that had been snatched away from me leaving me devastated and broken.  Not once but three times.  I vowed I would never allow myself to completely fall in love with a child that belonged to someone else like that again.   But because of that dream and only because of that dream I felt safe to love him freely and give my heart over to him.  I felt he was sent to us and I felt that was my promise that he would be safe to love without fear that he would be taken away from me.  Then on August 23^rd that promise was broken in the worst imaginable way as he was most certainly taken from me in the cruelest and most permanent way. 

I felt betrayed and devastated on so many levels. 

At first I was angry and confused railing at God that it would have been better to have never had him at all than to have loved that deeply and lost him so cruelly.

But I was wrong.

I would rather have had him and known that love for even that short amount of time than to have missed that love or to have missed one minute with him.

And the strangest thing is that it was my love flowing to him and not necessarily his to me that was so powerful and profound.  It was no secret he loved his Mama and his Daddy much more than he did me.  He loved me but he’d throw me over in a minute for either of them.  Unlike my first granddaughter – she preferred me over anyone.  She cried for me, clung to me and never wanted to go home when she was his age.  He was never like that.  When either of his parents were present he would not let me so much as hold him – so afraid, he was that they would slip off and leave him behind.  He enjoyed himself and had a great time once they were 10 minutes gone but he always cried for them and had the choice been his --he never would have stayed.

If I could know and love a child that had not even been conceived; then I can love that same child after he has left this world.  if he existed before he was ever born then it would also be true that he exists still today.  I loved him before he was born.  I loved him while he was here.  And I love him now.  I feel it when I see his pictures.  I feel it when I watch his videos.  I didn’t "used" to love him.  I still love him.  I will always love him. 

I think we tend to believe it is receiving love that makes us happy.  But what loving him taught me was that you can be deliriously happy in the love that you have for others because it truly never mattered to me whether he loved me or not.  My joy was in loving him. 

Like we are with our own children, you love them even when they are angry, belligerent, or in trouble and you love them whether they love you back or not. 

As I thought about that I realized the bigger picture as it relates to God’s love for us too.  He loves us unconditionally but like our own children we really don’t think about it or appreciate it in the beginning.  It is only when we choose to love Him back that we really experience the true meaning and magnitude of God’s love.  It is only when we give love that we truly begin to experience the true joy of love. 

Birthday and other gifts to hold onto...

Today is my baby boy’s third birthday… a difficult day to say the least. 

The last video that I took of him while I was babysitting him at his house was right before my birthday and he was singing “Haddy Dirday to you”.  I had never even heard him say Happy Birthday much less sing it and in tune.   But he did and then blew out pretend candles and applauded himself by yelling Yay! at the end.  What a birthday gift.

It was like the rare gift of hearing him run to me last Christmas yelling “I missed you!”  Everyone in the room stopped in their tracks.  He had hardly said an intelligible word let alone a sentence and obviously knew the meaning of what he said and yet he had just turned two.  "Haddy Dirday" came eight months later.  Clearly, he did not talk at two.  But it was a gift to me as it was to be our last Christmas with him. 

For Brian’s 40^th birthday he gave me a gift.  He wrote me a beautiful letter telling me all of things I had done right and how much he appreciated all I had done raising him; a rare gift to any mother.  I cried for days.  It took him 40 years to write it – but it came just in time and now I have it to cling to forever. 

And like Brian writing that Journal to Paxton - he had never mentioned that he was doing that and we were all shocked but in view of the circumstances of how this was left for him to bear the blame - what a great gift that was for us to find.  My oldest son was upset that we wanted it read at the Memorial Service - he said that it was personal and written for Paxton and we had no right to share it publicly.  I told him "on the contrary son, that journal was written for us; all of us that knew him and loved him."

For Donald’s birthday this past year Brian did something he had always wanted to do.  He bought tickets and took Donald to the Nascar race at Talladega.  He’d never done anything like that before.  They had a great day and shared a common bond and made precious memories that are priceless now.

Last fall as a surprise for Donald – Brian and his oldest son came while we were gone and raked up all the leaves and sweet gum balls in our yard.  We have a large yard and believe me that was no small task. It was a good six hours work with two people working at it - and they did that unknown to us.  We came in late and did not see it until we woke up the next morning.  It was like Santa Clause had come to a 60 year old man! 

And for Kara’s last birthday we gave her the Michael Kors purse she had been saving for.  She was so surprised and delighted and squealed that it was the best thing anyone could have gotten her.  Comet could not scrub the smile from her face all day long.  It was the most I have ever enjoyed giving someone a gift.  We actually enjoyed it far more than she did! 

Our last Thanksgiving was at their house – the first time ever anyone had fixed Thanksgiving dinner for our family besides me and it was her first big holiday.  She was so proud and enjoyed it so much.  I wouldn't take anything now for that memory.

I think of so many strange things that happened over the past year or so.  Things that I look back on now and know were a gift.  Things we can hold and treasure forever. 

Haddy dirday little man – I will forever treasure the gift of your love and the short time we had with you changed my life.  I love you always.  Nana

Things grief has taught me...

I know it is difficult to know what to say especially to someone in our situation and although we have had so many friends, church members, neighbors and co-workers that have been so thoughtful and so kind – we have also been shocked and surprised that most of the time, the care and concern we have received has been from people we either barely knew or did not know at all and then equally surprised at so little care and concern from some of the people we would have thought of as those friends closest to us or those that have been a part of our lives for years.

I have had sweet and thoughtful cards, calls, texts and emails, gifts, meals and donations to the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society  -- from such surprise sources as: my retired mail carrier, a girl in a resource department on my job, my new boss, the real estate agent we purchased a house through several years ago, my ex-daughter in law (divorced over 20 years ago), a neighbor from 25 years ago, our receptionist at work, an ex-co-worker that left the company almost two years ago, a young man new to our company that I only worked with about two months, the lady that replaced me when I changed jobs, the receptionist from another company located on the same floor as ours, my daughter’s Sabbath School class (not the same church or denomination as me), my sister’s best friend, my sister’s pastors mother. 

But sometimes those that you thought were your closest friends seem kind of freaked out and just don’t know what to say or how to act and so they simply avoid you.  This is a time when your emotions are so raw and you are so overly sensitive that friendships can be forged through the simplest act of care and concern or forever broken for the lack of it.

You really need not say or do a lot – sometimes just showing up is more than enough.  A hug and a simple “I’m so sorry” is perfect.  I could never have imagined what a simple card in the mail could do to lift your spirits. There have literally been days when a simple card in the mail actually made the difference between life and death at that moment.  You really may never realize what such a small gesture can mean to someone that is hurting.  A quick phone call with “Hey I was thinking about you – is there anything you need?”  They will likely say “No”, but ask anyway.

Also please know that we need to talk about it.  We need to talk about or hear our loved one’s names.  Please don’t come and try and distract us with talk about football or current events to avoid bringing our loved one up in conversation because you think it may make us sad – we are sad – there is no avoiding that.  We have no desire to forget them or pretend it did not happen.  We need to talk about it and it helps if you listen.  And yes, we may cry.  Bring chocolate and cry with us or just get us a tissue and tough it out. 

The only difference between living through a profound loss and never having lived through one – is time.  If you live long enough – you will experience great loss at some point.  One thing I have learned is how important it is to be caring, compassionate and supportive to those experiencing great loss because it does matter.

I 'm sure I have been guilty of the same, though I hope not often and one thing for sure that has come from this – is that I will never again be that person that doesn’t know what to say so I say nothing. 

The holiday season approaches…

Well Thanksgiving came and went and thank God, it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated.  On the actual day of Thanksgiving – we did not do our traditional family dinner.  Donald and I sat alone in the house all day and ate a leftover hamburger!  Now for the die-hard traditionalist --that is a first.  But two of my grandsons had other plans and would not be able to come so as opposed to having any additional empty chairs – we opted to move our traditional Thanksgiving dinner to Saturday.  My daughter came to help on Friday and we spent the entire day together which was good I think for both of us.  Saturday – I had some free time before everyone arrived and I got the crying out of the way.  It served as a pressure release and I was able to do dinner without a melt-down as I was able to put the sadness on the back burner.  She and I had talked about the loss of the kids and the situation a lot on Friday while we were alone and it kind of got it behind us and although all of us thought about them, everyone seemed to do all right.  I am still very relieved it is over.  I had dreaded it for weeks.

I was home for the four day holiday weekend and it has not been easy but it was okay for the most part. I’ve had my moments but I am learning that that is to be expected as apparently ‘this’ is my new normal; periodically crying, uncontrollably –at random unexpected times and in random unexpected places--maybe forever?  But other than thinking I am losing it --I'm good.

This has truly been the worst year of my entire life.  And one of the things that I was “thankful” for during our Thanksgiving meal was that 2014 is nearly over! 

It has been one nightmare after the other.  January – we got caught up in the ice storm that paralyzed the city as the four million people that usually jam our roads every day during our 3:00 - 7:00 rush "hour" --all tried to leave the city at the same time --in ice.  They jammed the entire city with thousands of stranded cars --some stranded for days and most didn't get home that night.  My husband and I spent the night in our car in a grocery store parking lot in a scary section of town (with about 100 other cars and two school buses!) in 18 degree weather with no food, water or bathroom.

We came home to find our neighbors two 90 lb dogs attacked our little 30 lb 10 year old dog and she was bitten multiple times and in shock and terrific pain.

In February my 44 year old son in law had a heart attack.  He was all right thank God but required testing, treatment and several days in the hospital. (they had no insurance…)

My mother's best friend, Rachel a part of my life as long as I can remember, passed away fifteen years to the day at the exact same time as my mother.

In March I had a car wreck – my first in over 35 years a miracle in itself considering I typically drive about 100 miles a day in a city of 4,000,000 of some of the worst drivers in some of the worst traffic in the U.S. 

There was a shake up in my department at work and my boss was removed from his position and was no longer my boss after 6 years.   So I decided to take another position in a completely different department.  It was a good move for me but still a very emotional, sad and stressful transition.

April, we moved into a rental house that has had one issue right behind the next - the traffic is a nightmare, the roof was leaking, large dead trees falling in the yard and this was the third such move in 6 years. 

May, my unmarried, 18 year old granddaughter happily announced that she was pregnant.   

June, my sister was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  

July, she and her husband moved in with us, I became her full time caregiver requiring we spend four to six hours a day in the bone marrow transplant clinic for a yet undetermined amount of time on an emotional roller coaster during what promises to be a long and arduous recovery from a stem cell transplant.

Several of the neighborhood dogs attacked and killed my daughter’s little Pomeranian that had been a huge part of our family for many years.

August, during a really scary complication with my sister, my brother in law accidently let my timid little Siamese cat out and she has never been seen again. 

Then just weeks before my sister’s transplant the unimaginable happened that made the rest of the year seem like a day at the park.  I lost my son, my daughter in law and the baby boy I adored in a violent, and most devastating triple tragedy leaving us all the misery of never knowing the truth about what happened because of a  botched  investigation that left my son to forever bear the blame. 

September, as icing on the proverbial cake, one of my very best friends and I parted ways after 37 years of being almost as close as sisters.

October, Joan had the dreaded Bone Marrow/Stem Cell transplant and 100 straight days of almost daily clinic visits for 4 to 6 hours a day.  Attempting to keep her in a germ-free, bacteria-free, fungus-free environment because she has no immune system.

November, Graft vs. Host disease, two diabetic seizures, three potentially deadly viruses, four different medical offices  --and a partridge in a pear tree.


December, Paxton's third birthday and the first Christmas in my adult life that I will not have my children with me and I will not, in fact, celebrate Christmas at all.   

That hits every major stressor on the scale and the worst one -- three times. 

I will be so glad to see 2014 in the rear-view mirror.   

New Years Eve will be one holiday I am looking forward to celebrating!

Things I wish I could say...

To the Sheriff’s Department --

If these were your children my guess is that you’d have done a more thorough job of investigating all of the possibilities and you would not have jumped to this conclusion in the first fifteen minutes.

I’m betting you would have thought a motive was important if either of the three of them had been your child.

This was not an exercise in curiosity.  We really needed to know what happened to our children.  That is not an unreasonable request.

Making up stories did not give me closure.  It negated everything that you had ever told me. I believe what you said about the investigation even less than I already did.

To Kara’s Mom –

We have more in common than you might think.

Our children loved each other and we shared a grandchild.  We share the most profound grief a mother can ever know.

We are family.  I care about what happens to you and what you think and how you feel.  I wish desperately that we could sit down and just talk.

I loved your daughter and more importantly so did Brian – with all his heart.

He knew Kara was worried about you and he had just told her to call you and tell you to pack your things and just come live with them – He told her you would always have a home with them as long as you wanted.

To Kara –

You were a great wife and a great little mom.  I was so proud of you and you were a perfect addition to our family and we all loved you so much.

I appreciate the time that you let me have with your baby.  You were never selfish with him and I was so blessed to have you.  It was because of you that I had the joy of him.  You will never know what the videos you made for me mean to me.  They are my lifeline; especially the last one where you are coaxing Paxton to say: “Hey Nana, I love you.”  I watch it over and over.  It is priceless.  Thank you so much for thinking of me and giving me that to hold onto.

You made Brian happy.  For that I will always be eternally grateful.

He wanted you to have the business you had always wanted because he said that you had always supported his dreams and he wanted to help you realize yours.  He planned to sell off some of his tools so that he could build you a nail/make up salon downstairs so that you could see your dream of a business of your own where you could use your talents and still never have to leave Paxton.

To Brian –

I wish I had hugged you goodbye the last time I saw you but I didn’t and I will always regret that.  Hugging always made you a little uncomfortable and I opted not to for your sake – I wish I had followed my heart.

I love you and miss you so much it hurts.  You can never know what the letter you sent me last year meant to me and you can never know what finding your journal to Paxton has meant to all of us.

No matter what they say, I know and have always known that you did not do this. I knew you and I knew who you were in your heart.

Oh my God, what on earth happened?

To Paxton –

You were the light of my life and truly a gift from God.  I don’t know how I am going to go on without you.

I wish I could just hold you one more time but then I know that would not be enough either.

I will remember always the gift you gave me last Christmas when you spoke the first complete sentence I’d ever heard you say when you saw me come in and yelled across the room at the top of your lungs: “Nana, I missed you!”  It melted my heart and made me cry right on the spot.  They were the sweetest words I’d ever heard.  I miss you too baby boy – so much until it physically hurts.

I love you so much and I think about you every single day and truly, do not know how I will live without you.

So many whys...

Well, we had the second and last interview with the Sergeant at the Sheriff's Department.  I came away feeling "defeated".


We have spent the last two months asking for only two things:  A list of the prescription medications (there was a total of 5, we only knew about two) taken from the house; and a toxicology report.


The Sergeant assured me he had the list of medicines for me finally.  And that he had the autopsy results back and he would meet with us to discuss his findings.  He agreed to this because I emailed him and asked him why no one cared to find out “why” this happened as they say because there was no cause. I told him I wanted a toxicology report as we were told would be done – we suspected if things happened like he said that Ambien was involved; I wanted the list of drugs taken from the scene.  And I had tried on three different occasions to get the drug list from the Coroner, to no avail.


I drove the 35 miles to the Sheriff’s office.  My daughter also drove about 25 and we met him a second time.  The big breakthrough information he had for us was that the autopsy showed Brian died of a gunshot wound to the head.  The list of medications he had for us were the same two we had had all along he had just changed the names to the generic name.  And the “why” that he told us was a story he apparently made up on the spot to give us some false sense of closure.


Our basis for not believing that this happened out of some vengeful act of malice caused by an argument or as they suggested, he had just found out that his wife was cheating on him and snapped or that she had threatened to leave him and take the baby - was the fact that nothing was wrong and none of that was true.  And that they needed to find out what the prescription drugs were that were in the house because something had to explain this - what they were saying happened was absolutely impossible.  Brian would never have intentionally hurt his wife or his child under any circumstances; Kara had done nothing wrong; and they were not getting a divorce.  Brian and Kara were not arguing, there was no other man, no depression, no problems that would have even caused him to kill himself much less hurt the ones he loved.


So to make me have a quasi valid reason that might explain this.  He sat there and told us that Kara's mom told him during her "interview" that Kara had in fact called her and confided to her that she "wanted to leave Brian and come back home and live with her."  My daughter and I both sat in stunned silence unable to dispute it because we could not of course prove it had not happened.  He assumed because of the circumstances that we were not in touch with Kara’s mom to know the difference I guess. We asked when this conversation took place?  He said, "I do not have timeline on that."  Well if this, in fact, was an interview to try and determine probable cause - why not?  Wouldn't that have been important?  It upset my daughter and I and we just gave up and left.  It left us both speechless.  But my daughter would not rest until she heard that straight from Kara's mom - who adamantly denied ever saying that.  As a matter of fact she only said, "If Kara had had any indication that they were either one in danger - she would have taken that baby and left. But apparently she never did.  My baby was determined to make that marriage work no matter what."


So he had tried to pull off a deception regarding the medication names.  And then turned right around and made up a complete lie to get us to go away and stop asking him for information as to how the investigation was carried out and why they just came to this conclusion.


And as for me requesting that they order the toxicology report like they told us they were doing – He says he spoke with his Major and that they will absolutely NOT order the test because they do not need it to prove cause and manner of death.  But that I can hire an attorney, get a court order and have the blood released to a private lab of my choice and pay for it and do it myself.


We thanked him and left.


I will leave him alone. But not because of his ridiculous scenario about Kara leaving has given me closure but because asking him anything is a waste of my time and gasoline.  He told me a lie and in my eyes that makes him a liar.  I have no interest in hearing anything more he has to say because I cannot trust him.


I called the GBI myself yet again regarding getting the blood sample.  They told me they could do the toxicology test if I would call the Coroner and get her to order it.  I told them she would not.  The Sheriff’s Department would not and I just needed to know the proper channels to get it myself.  They told me I needed a court order to get it.  I asked her why I needed a court order to get what belonged rightfully to his next of kin and not them?  She told me she would transfer me to open records and I could discuss it with them.  I did.  They told me all I needed was to request it in writing and gave me an email address.  No lawyer.  No judge.  But I did need a lab for them to send it to.  I then hung up to call private labs.  Where I was told that they could not test the blood because it was over 7 days old!  It was three weeks before I found out no tests were even being done and because of the lies we were told about that – we now had no recourse.  


How can I ever believe what I have been told about their death when not one single piece of information we have received has been the truth?


These were my children.  They deserve better than what they have gotten.  Brian's may have been a suicide but to accept this without an explanation, a motive and a believable truth is to diminish Kara and Paxton's lives entirely like they just weren't worth the trouble.


We owe it to all of them to get the truth.  They do not deserve to die and have nobody care "why" enough to even investigate it.  All of the reasons that someone walks in and does this; all of the scenarios that he gave me are absolutely NOT the case here.  According to what the Sergeant himself stated: There was no alcohol in the house.  There was no evidence of a single thing disturbed in the home.  They had bathed, put on pajamas, put the baby to bed, cut off lights, closed the blinds and "all" gone to bed.  According to their investigator "all" of them had gone to bed and it appeared everyone had gone to sleep. How did this not raise a red flag?


No answer.


Why if everything appeared normal was this just accepted at face value as being a domestic murder/suicide?  How if nothing fit the normal expected scenario and you walk in and there are five prescription drugs in the house did someone not assume drug interaction or drug side effects could have contributed to this and do a simple toxicology screen to find out?  Why when the  police on the scene said they had never had a “domestic call” to that house ever and they walk in and see a custom-made baby gate to keep the baby safe on the stairs, toys and a  child's room lovingly decorated, hundreds of children's books and movies, hot wheels cars, a clean and organized home, fifteen different translations of the bible, various bible study guides and books on religion on the book case, family portraits lining the walls and by all accounts no evidence of anything but a loving and happy little family.  Why was this not a red flag that something about this scene was amiss?  Why if they could explain away a suicide did “murder” not require a full investigation?  Why did Kara and Paxton's life not mean more to them than that?  They didn’t even bother to check their phones for texts or emails indicating a spat, infidelity, threats?  No one even cared enough to give us the correct date of death.  No one cared.  Period.


We care.  It is important to us.  The truth, a motive, something that makes sense - matters to us --because they mattered to us.  They always will. 


I love and miss them every one every single day.  And I believe with all my heart they deserve better than this - all of them.