Forty One

Today, February 13, 2011, would have been my big brother’s 41^st birthday. Instead, we are looking back yet again on the all too short 40 years we had with him.  In retrospect, this week last year set off a series of events in my own life that I never would have dreamed possible or even plausible.  But here we are, almost on the other side, and I know it was all in God’s plan.  Blessings abound, but heartache took its toll as well.  It was this time last year that I took the last picture I have of Brian:

He and his daughter Kayleigh were here in Stillwater to celebrate his 40^th birthday and to meet our newest cousin Rocco from New York City.  I have no clue now what this picture was all about, but I remember laughing my butt off at the time.  Now, it just makes me reflective, melancholy, and sad.

I miss you every day, Big Brother.  Thanks for the memories…

A Big Thank You!

A big THANK YOU and a hug of gratitude go out to my friend and fellow OSU employee, Ron King, for helping me put my video from Brian's funeral on the web in it's original settings.  He saw where I had made a change to the song in order to accommodate youtube's user policies, and he said he would be happy to host the video on his website.  He not only put the video up, but he also put the obituary up as well.  It is truly a beautiful thing, and to tell the truth, Ron and I don't really even know each other that well.  He just has a huge heart, and a knowledge base that would help me, and time to share.  We could all use someone like Ron in our lives!  And he's pretty funny, too, so that's just a bonus at this point!

Visit Brian's page on Ron's Website and watch the video again.

I also added a new page at the top  of the blog simply called "Brian" where all the posts relating to this NIGHTMARE are gathering in one place and listed chronologically.  I wanted to make sure those posts were all easily accessible, so that's they way I made that happen.

THANK YOU!!

One phone call from our knees

Your life can change in an instant.  Mine did.  About 11:20am last Sunday.  Here’s how that looked…

Rewinding all the way to Friday.  At some point during the day on Friday, I was talking to my mom and she mentioned that my older brother, Brian, had called her and said he wasn’t feeling well.  He was supposed to have his 4 year old daughter, Kayleigh, with him this weekend, but since he was not feeling well and did not want to expose her, he asked his ex-wife to take care of her.  We assumed he went to the Doctor or a walk-in clinic or something of the like.  Saturday, My mom called a few times, left a voicemail, emails, etc.  By Saturday night, the panic was setting in (at the time, I didn’t know how stressed she was about this).  So, Sunday morning, as Britt and I loaded up our 3 kids to get to the church by 7:30 since it was our long weekend to serve, I got a text from my mom saying she and Daddy still had not heard from Brian, so they were driving to Dallas.

I spent the next few hours texting her with “suggestions” – call the police, call his ex-wife, call ANYONE…  But they were determined to get there and see what was going on for themselves.  The last text I got from my parents was about 9:45 and they said they were crossing the Red River – which meant they were about an hour from his house.  About 11:15 (while I was super busy with my LifeChurch Host Team Leader duties), I glanced at my phone and saw a missed call and a voice mail from my mom.  My heart sunk, I RAN across the church lobby to my husband, basically THREW my phone at him and told him to call my mom back (I had listened to the 2 word voice mail that said “CALL ME” through a broken, teary voice, and I knew it was not good).

While dialing the phone, Britt lead me to the church office, quickly followed by our Volunteer Coordinator who I can only assume saw the events unfolding in the lobby.  She dutifully and lovingly held my hand (as I clung to her with my very life, pretty sure I screamed her name once, but I can’t be sure) while Britt spoke with  my mom on the phone – from about 30 feet away and with his back to me.  After a brief conversation and some head nodding, he turned around, and shook his head with tears in his eyes.  I screamed .  It was like a tragic scene from Law & Order or CSI.  I don’t remember all of the next 30 minutes of my life, but I was ushered into a side office, and I just remember people in an out of the room, a box of tissues being handed to me, lots of pats and shoulder rubs and a HUGE bear hug from my husband.

Some dear friends took the 3 Little Weavers from me for the afternoon, and Britt and I headed south.  Longest. Drive. EVER!  I felt like we would never get there.  Had to stop for gas pretty early on, then a  restroom break not too far from our destination.  I spent most of the ride on the phone with friends and family, sharing our tragic, horrible, awful, NIGHTMARE.  Only I didn’t realize this was only the first step.