How it Happened

As I write this entry I am sitting 50yds away from a beautiful waterfront cottage that I am staying at during my rotation for General Medicine in Onset, MA…a small community located in the infamous Cape Cod. I’ve wrote about this in my entry for June 14^th because it was the source of my “incredibly happy moment.” However…the daunting one year anniversary of Kevin’s death is vastly approaching and has left me drowning in a sea of memories and realities. It’s been one year and he is still dead. It’s still not a nightmare, and I still will never ever get to talk to him, see him, or hold him again.

I feel like I have been hiding from my pain to some extent because everyone does not know the truth…or maybe they do and still ignore it like I do. I have never wrote about the day he died in this blog and I feel like I have done that for many reasons. I did lie to people in the beginning about the nature of his death because I hated talking about it and I knew it would provoke countless painful questions that I didn’t even know myself. I also avoided addressing his death because it didn’t matter how he died…he still wasn’t coming back.

However, in the days approaching the one year anniversary I feel compelled to write about that day as a step toward healing. I started this blog just after he died as a way to let my friends and family know how I was.  That is not what this blog is today. It has been my saving grace…an outlet for my grief. A way to stay connected to a widowed community that I so desperately needed in the beginning. I read widow(er) blogs reverently in the beginning and they gave me one very powerful feeling: hope. I knew that I was not alone when I read those blogs and maybe someone who is newly widowed currently reads mine in search of the same validation that I needed: I was not alone and it does get better…somehow, someway, it will get better.

On that same note I feel like I owe it to myself to talk about the worst day of my life. That day shattered not only my world…but the world of Kevin’s family and friends.

I had just flown into Boise around 12:30am (mountain standard time) on the morning of June 24^th, 2011. My grandpa was not doing well and he was going to be honored in the Hazelton, ID 4^th of July parade that weekend. I didn’t want to miss it. I knew this was possibly going to be the last time I saw him alive. Kevin was also going to pick me up in Boise the afternoon of the 24^th so we could drive to Hazelton together and spend some much needed time together and with my family. The only ones who knew about Kevin and I coming home for the weekend were my parents who so graciously funded my plane ticket home considering Kevin and I’s bank account was less than sufficient to afford such a trip. We were going to surprise everyone else.

I spoke to Kevin at exactly 1:15am for the last time. We exchanged how excited we were to see each other said “goodnight” and “I love you” for the last time. At 5:03am I got a phone call from Kevin’s little brother. When I looked at the caller ID I just assumed it was Kevin calling me from Ian’s phone (not unusual because he constantly let his phone battery die) before he went to work. I answered with a chipper hello followed by Ian’s voice telling me the news that dropped my heart into my stomach. “Kevin’s been shot…they’re working on him…he has vitals and life flight was there working on him.” I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t comprehend what Ian had just told me on the other line. This couldn’t be..I thought to myself…I just talked to him, he’s coming to pick me up today.  I don’t remember what exactly happened next but I do remember calling my friend in Boise who I knew would answer. I was alone at the time and I knew he was going to die. I didn’t want to be alone when they told me he was dead.

The next few minutes were a blur. The one thing I could absolutely not comprehend was that he had been shot.  I remember someone from the hospital telling me that they had found his truck and my mind immediately went to a more plausible explanation. He was in a car accident. This was a logical explanation that I could actually understand. It was logical that he had been in a car accident…it was not logical that he had been shot. While all this was going on I was back and forth on the phone with my parents, my brother, Kevin’s sister, and everyone at the hospital in Cedarville, CA.  I wanted to stay optimistic but my experience working as a scribe in the emergency room overpowered my hope for survival. I knew what it meant when Ian said “they were working on him.” It meant they were doing everything they could but the chance of him coming out of this alive was very, very small.

At 5:37am Ian confirmed what I already knew. Kevin was dead.  I had stayed the night at a friends apartment that happened to be next door to the church that Kevin and I attended when we lived in Boise. Immanuel Lutheran. I remembering sitting on the curb basically waiting for the inevitable.

For about 20 minutes I had a sharp clarity that came from nowhere. I had to call my school and tell them what happened and that I didn’t know when…or even if I would be returning.  At this point my mind still understood that it was a car accident so that’s what I told the director of my program.  I believe at some point during the day she sent and email to the rest of my class informing them that he had died in a car accident. It wasn’t until 2 hours after he died that I talked to one of Kevin’s friends who made it very clear what had actually happened.

Kevin was mistaken as an intruder at a friend’s house and shot in his right side. The Surprise Valley EMS, hospital crew, and life flight team did the best they could but his injuries were too great.

The amount of strength it just took me to write that was more than anybody could imagine. I have discussed that day at length with Kevin’s closest friends and family but I knew there were still people out there that haven’t heard the story, or even heard the truth.  I initially let my classmates believe that it was a car accident because I hated talking about it and I knew they had the same mindset as me. A car accident was logical.  People die from car accidents all the time, but a gun shot would have brought questions. Now that it’s been a year I feel like it’s finally time to talk about it.

Like I said before, this took more strength to write than any other posts…it was also the most healing.

I miss Kevin every single day, I think about him at least 90-100% of the day, and I love him more now than ever.

This week will be hard…but I’m searching for the healing steps forward and I believe this was one of them.