• Five years ago January 26th was a Saturday and at about this time I was getting the kids into the car to drive to the airport and look for his car.   A black Ford Explorer in a sea of other Ford Explorer’s.     He had gone out of town for a one night trip and was expected back late evening on Friday.   I knew something was wrong when I was getting the kids ready for bed, then 4 and 8, and he hadn’t responded to my last text for hours which wasn’t like him.      I spent a sleepless night calling and texting him constantly.   I even got dressed at one point in case the police came to my door.     The only way I can explain it is a deep sense that my life was about to change drastically.    My initial thought was that he had an accident driving home from the airport.   I also had always had a sense that he would die young.   I know that sounds odd but I even told one of my sisters that at one point.    And ironically just about a month prior to his death I vividly remember him sitting on his favorite spot on the couch, computer on lap, and I asked him if he wanted to be buried or cremated if something ever happened.    We didn’t have a will and it was starting to stress me out as the kids were getting older so I was worried about the what if’s.   He said he would want to be cremated and his ashes thrown in a trout stream.   I told him I would want the same but maybe my ashes thrown over a beautiful mountain vista.    Did I have an inner sense?   Just coincidence?   I don’t know.

As soon as I could early that Saturday morning I called his parents to see if possibly he was there.    We hadn’t been fighting or anything but I just didn’t know where to start and hadn’t heard from him in a day and half.

Yes, my last sentence to him was “I won’t bother you again!” and his last response to me was “yeah”.   Sigh.

So after driving around the airport for a while and obviously not finding his car we stopped at a McDonald’s so I could make some calls.    The kids got smoothies or something and I remember the fear really starting to rise up in me and looking around at all the people just enjoying a Saturday morning having breakfast and feeling a little outside of my body.    I was worried he might have just needed to escape and get away so was leary of alerting his reps or co-workers but again I also knew that he would have told me if he needed to get away so I called one of my neighbors who is a private investigator and told him he was supposed to be  in Denver with a rep.     It didn’t take him long to find the rep and call me back saying that Brian never arrived in Denver.  He had called his rep and said he was sick and couldn’t make the trip.    That’s when I really, really knew something was terribly wrong.   My first thought right then was that maybe he was having an affair and hiding away or something but that quickly left my thoughts as quickly as it came and I tried to figure out what to do next.    My sister lives by the airport so the kids and I went there for a while so I could try to come up with a game plan.      I couldn’t get info on his phone without the police getting involved and I didn’t have contact information on my own phone for his work, co-workers, etc.    Eventually we headed back to our house to wait for him and all the while I was texting him saying I was going to call the police if I didn’t hear from him soon, etc.

No text back so I did call the police and report him missing.   Friends picked up the kids to distract them so I could deal with everything and not freak them out more than they already were.    The police came quickly unlike the movies where they seem to wait 48 hours or something.    I told them what little I knew and they set off to do their police work.    I knew they would be able to ping his phone.    It was an unusually warm January day in Kansas and a lot of my neighbors were out sitting in their driveways and kids playing outside.   One of them came to sit with me while I waited.    It was excruciating.   Then a little after 3 pm that day we noticed three officers walking up to my house and then my stomach dropped out.     She knew too.   She asked if I wanted her to stay and I said no.

They came in and said I might want to sit down, just like the movies, and I sat on the armrest of my couch.    The officer told me that they had located him and that he was deceased.   I didn’t scream, I didn’t burst into tears.   I went into immediate shock.   Utter shock.   They had found his vehicle at a local hotel very close to our home and he was in a room inside.   Honestly after that my mind goes fuzzy and blank a lot.    I remember I looked down at my phone and had accidentally dialed my oldest bonus son as the officer was talking to me but I don’t think he could understand what was being said.    I then had to call his parents and family and all of that is still a complete blur.

Family came over and my father and brother in law went to pick up his car from the hotel.     We were all in such a state of shock that we forgot that the kids would think daddy was home when they got back and saw his car in the driveway and that’s exactly what happened.   Hayden, then 8, was dropped off and came running in the door saying “Is daddy home?”.     Shear heartbreak.      We sat on the couch with Brian’s parents and sister and brother in-law and Brian’s dad broke the news to the children.   They just cried.

So this is what happened five years ago today.    My world certainly came crashing down and changed forever as did the rest of Brian’s family and his four children’s lives.

With this blog I want to share what my personal experience has been during these past five years.   As you can imagine it’s been a roller coaster.   Lots of ups, downs, a new relationship, joy, pain and deep grief all tangled up together.