A year later..

A year ago today, I received a call from the Gibson County Coroner telling me that Bill had killed himself. As I talked with Jacob about it yesterday, he said, "Mom, we were like 2 peas........in different pods on different continents." As he spoke, he moved his hands and extended his arms until they were as far apart as they could go. It was sad -- but true.

Bill always thought that someday his kids would just magically want to hang out with him, even though he had practically nothing to do with them their entire lives. I tried for years to tell him that wasn't going to happen. He needed to be working on that relationship from day one. He never believed me, but I think toward the end of his life, he was starting to see that it was true.

Jacob's Declaration

The kids don't speak much of Bill's suicide - or Bill for that matter.  However, Jacob did come in the other day and declare,

"I will not be the third generation of Huddleston men to kill themselves."

Not that I had ever thought he would, but still, it was good to hear.

Winding down the business of dying

It's  been about seven weeks since Bill died.  In some ways it seems like years, and  in other  ways it seems like minutes.  I think of him often, but perhaps that is because every day seems to be consumed with some item of business to take care of regarding his death. Today,  I had to go to the attorney, the BMV, the bank, and the Social Security office, as well as making phone calls to Toyota and to the insurance company regarding the kids. 

I'm blessed with great friends and a remarkable brother who have been there to help me every step of the way. They have certainly made this difficult journey easier. 

The last goodbye

It was a beautiful day today.  Sunny and 70 degrees.  Perfect fishing weather.  We chose today to go to Bill's favorite fishing lake and say our goodbyes. Just me and the kids ~~ it was a simple ceremony.  We talked about some good memories and decided if we had to bury anything of their dad, it should be his faults. Once his ashes were in the water, it was just a matter of minutes till he was forever gone from our lives. 

Probably 5 times a day

When I'm working on Bill's affairs, I find myself thinking, "I'll ask Bill about that."

Then I remember.  

Everyone is doing pretty well. There are so many things to do wrapping up a person's life. So many things I never thought I'd be doing. 

Memories of a happier time with Bill

 

So much to do

I've never dealt with the aftermath of someone dying from the standpoint of taking care of their business. When my dad died, my brother, David did all that stuff.  We had the arrangement while daddy was alive, that he did business stuff, I did health stuff.  That worked great.

In this case, there is no other person to help.  His brother and sister met me at the funeral home last week to give consent for Bill's body to be released to us. They left with promises to keep in touch.

This week I have dealt with the coroner, the funeral home, the police, the cable company, post office, phone company, water and light company.  I have talked to his employer several times. Put obituaries in the papers and began the process of dealing with his personal property.

I've talked to our attorney, the bank, his investment broker, the county clerk and recorder,  the Veteran's Department, the Social Security Department and the place he stored his boat.  I've been in contact with the company that insured his boat, his truck and his life.

Now the forms are coming in and the process will begin to wrap up his life. My emotions are all over the place. I feel like I'm bi-polar on an hourly basis.  In my mind sometimes, I still picture the Billski I fell in love with so many years ago.  I can see him, clear as a bell, coming up the stairs to my apartment, smiling at the sight of me. Every few days there would be a "surprise prize" waiting on me when I got home from work.

I remember how excited he was to get married and to have Andi and Zac as his family. I thought our world was complete. After a few months of dating, when he "fell" off the couch - I literally thought he fell, but he was just getting on one knee to propose - I remember thinking we would be happy forever. And loved just as long.  When I remember THAT Billski, I get very angry at him.

Somewhere along the lines, Bill withdrew from us. Became a loner.  The last year we were married, he started drinking. Something he had never done before in the entire time I knew him. He was drinking on a daily basis. He would just sit alone in his tv room, brooding and drinking. The kids tried their best to avoid him. He would not discuss what was bothering him. With me or anyone else.

I don't know all of the demons he was wrestling, but I hope in death, he finds the peace that alluded him in life.

Last Pictures of Bill

I took some pictures of Bill and the boys a few weeks ago. Jacob's face was swollen from having his wisdom teeth out and he couldn't' smile very well, but they are the last ones we have, so I'm gonna put them in my blog.

 

 

 

Making arrangements

David, Jacob and I met with the funeral director today to make the arrangements for Bill. Bill's sister and brother met us there to sign the necessary paperwork to allow us to do that, since Jacob is still a minor. 

Afterwards, we went to Bill's house to give them some family items, such as the flag from their dad's funeral and a pocket watch from their grandfather. They were very kind.  Bill really didn't know what he was missing in life.  They did mention that Bill's death was on their dad's birthday. I wonder if that played a part in his mind. 

Bill was nothing if not organized

Bill did not leave a note for any of his children. Instead, he did what he always did.  He showed he cared by providing and trying to make things easier for us.

I went to his home today to make sure everything was secure and to see what needed to be done.  I had no idea how much stuff was there, since I had never been there before.

As I walked in, I was greeted by a neatly organized group of papers.  Laid out on the counter were his checkbook, opened and balanced, his watch, his pocket knife and his phone case.  I suppose the police have his phone and billfold, since I did not find them.

The papers showed he had paid all his bills the day before.  He had all of his pertinent documents in a backpack with the receipts, truck and boat titles, financial information, passwords and that sort of thing.  He had never even bothered to remove me from any of our joint property.

As I walked through his house, I was struck by the differences in our lives. Whereas, my house probably has a hundred pictures on the wall at least, he had one.  Just one of the Carly, Wesley, Ryan and Jacob when they were all little.

Every room was painted stark white.  I don't think there's much white in my house except toilet paper and Kleenex.  His socks were all folded with precision and laid neatly one behind another like envelopes in a box.  We ball ours up and play basketball as we toss them in the drawers on laundry day. His canned goods were in military straight rows, labels all pointed to the front and going from large to small in size. His shirts were neatly divided, all hung and in sections, long sleeve, short sleeve, work shirts.

It must have driven him crazy to live in our colorful, haphazard, noisy house. I was married to the man for almost 20 years and it's like I never knew him at all.

A death in the family

This weekend we had a great time celebrating Gotcha Day. However, today has been horrible. There's really no other word for it.  Bill came over yesterday to see the kids. He came in with several boxes of Girl Scout cookies to give them. He took the boys out for pizza and a movie.  I met him at the theater when the movie was over.  Carly and Wes went to youth group at our church across the street, while Jacob and I went to another movie.

Sometime after that, Bill went to his trailer, transferred his money from his savings account to mine, and then killed himself.  He had brought all of his guns (or what I thought were all of his guns) to the house last weekend. He told me there had been several robberies around his house and he just wanted to store them at the house till he got a gun safe. Looking back, I just think he did not want them to be confiscated, as had happened to his dad's guns several years ago.  

He was quite talkative last weekend.  He was happy that he had received a payment for a patent he had gotten for Toyota. He ate lunch with us and then sat and watched TV with the boys for several hours, since Jacob did not feel like going out after just having his wisdom teeth removed.

And he left the boat keys here yesterday.  I found them this morning and knew something was wrong.  We were in the middle of a huge snowstorm and so I called the police in the county where Bill lived to go check on him.

Over the course of the next few hours there were several phone calls back and forth between myself and the police. But it was a call from the coroner who confirmed my suspicions.  The police had found Bill's body in the yard barn.

I had to call his brother, since we aren't married and Jacob isn't 18 to make the arrangements.  Bill had not spoken to his brother for several years. In fact, his family did not even know we were divorced.  So there was a lot of information for him to try and process.  A bit later, Bill's sister called and I went through the whole thing again.  I believe they are going to call the coroner and have Bill's body released to us, once the autopsy is complete. That's what they said they would do, anyway.  Bill wished to be cremated and we will respect those wishes.

The kids are all in a state of numbness.  Everyone grieves differently and right now I think they are doing everything they can to avoid thinking about what has happened. I don't blame them one bit.

Therapy in the home

During the past year, we have had in-home therapy, which mainly started because of issues with Ryan.  Ultimately, though, it helped clarify things in my mind that needed to be done.

Two particular exercises that the therapist had us participate in were very instrumental in my decision to file for divorce.

The first session involved every member of the family pretending to be a sculptor of sorts.  One at a time, each of us had to "place" every other member of the family where they "see" them as their place in the house - and explain why.

Without fail, every single child placed Bill, in his recliner, remote in hand, door closed to block out the noise of a family, in a room away from the family, watching TV.  Not one of them included him in the nucleus of our family.

As for me, every child placed me either at my desk, where I usually sit during school time or in the kitchen/dining room area, where we all hang out.   Ryan was always at the back door, wanting to go fishing and away from us.

The other kids placed themselves in close proximity to where I was.

The second exercise, and perhaps the more telling of the two consisted of the therapist bringing in a stack of about 50 index cards.  On the cards were written things like - Cooks, Cleans, Wraps presents, does grocery shopping, happy all the time, likes to sing, dances in the kitchen, loud, disciplinarian, teacher, gives great hugs, smiles a lot, in charge of everything, grumpy, makes most of the decisions, does the dirty jobs, laundry, unloads the dishwasher, mows the grass and on and on and on. 

Then we all sat around the table with the cards spread out and when she said go, we "assigned" them to someone by putting the card in front of whoever we thought the card fit.  At first, I think everyone was afraid to start, so I finally took the Likes to Sing card and put it in front of Carly. That broke the ice and everyone was in a frenzy assigning cards.

When all was said and done, Bill had 2 cards in front of him.  Does the dirty jobs (because they said he was the one who "snaked" out the drains when they get stopped up with tree roots outside) and grumpy.  Except they had added "all the time."

As I sat and looked at those cards, it was obvious that there were certain ones of us, (what I now think of as The Final Four) who were a family.  We shared the good times, the chores, the responsibilities and everything else that goes along with being a family.

And as I pondered how they were divided between the rest of us, it hit me, "These kids deserve better than living with grumpy all the time.   I can hire the drains cleaned if needed." 

Sometimes, therapy can be life changing indeed.

Moving Day

Bill was up early this morning, packing the vehicles and then he and I drove to his new apartment, where he and the kids hauled his belongings up a couple of flights of stairs. 

Me -- not so much.  I sat in the Suburban and read a book on my Kindle.  Then the kids and I went to lunch to celebrate......my birthday.

Zac and Benjamin came over for the afternoon, then tonight we went to watch Sophie at the high school basketball game, where she was the Little Miss Princess.

All in all, a very peaceful birthday and to borrow a well known phrase, the first day of the rest of my life.

An oxymoron ~~ A civil divorce

Things are swimming along in the "so far, so good" category as far as the divorce is going. Thursday morning we attended our court ordered "Parenting through Transition" classes.  We were the only couple there and without a doubt the oldest people there.

Bill is moving out in 4 days.  He spent this weekend working around the house.  His list of accomplishments was impressive:

• He installed a light in what is now my living room, but will be a dining room. He agreed to do this before we moved in over 15 years ago. It is now done and the room is much brighter!
• He brought the electrical outlets flush with the wall, because they were recessed when I put bead board on the dining room walls 10 years ago.  He was supposed to do it in August, 2002.
• He ran a line under the house from the kitchen to my bedroom so I can have internet access in the bedroom. That was cold, icky work.
• He replaced some shelving in the pantry that was sagging.
• He dug a trench away from the house on one corner where we have a drainage problem.
• He cleaned and repaired the gutters.
• He installed a new light in the laundry room.
• He took out the old and installed a new dryer (mine died yesterday).
• He checked all the fluids in the vehicles I'm keeping and serviced them.

Not a bad weekend's work. We still went to church today and he managed to watch a few football games.

So there are those people who say, "That just shows how much he cares about you."  Really?  It was very helpful and much appreciated, but why did I have to wait 15 years for a light that took less than an hour for him to install?

The cynical part of me thinks it is a clear demonstration of just how "checked out" he was of our family -- and he wants to leave with the knowledge that we are good to go.

Still, whatever the reason, I am very happy to have all of that done.  Those things will make my life easier as I start this journey of being a single mom again. 

The post where the D word is first mentioned

Perhaps, most likely really, I knew it was coming before my accident.  If you read this passage from my recounting of my accident, then you might have noticed something......or rather someone was missing.

"It's strange how many thoughts you can think about when you realize you are about to die. I thought of how silly it was to die doing something so fun. I thought of all of my kids and how I hoped they knew how much I loved them. I wondered if Zac and Andie would get married and I thought of Benjamin and was sad that we wouldn't even remember me at his age.

I remember clearly thinking, "It's over, it's time to let go" and I let go of the branch I was holding onto. I started thinking of my dad and was picturing his face when the next thing I saw was Andi ~~ dunking under water and breathing air into my mouth."

But not once did I think of Bill.  Later, that night as I lay in the ICU, even in my drug induced haze, it occurred to me that if I was in love with my husband of 16 years, I should have thought of him in my dying moments. But I hadn't. And I knew then, in that moment, that I would someday be getting a divorce. 

We have gone through marriage counseling several times, with Christian counselors.  I have Biblical reasons to support my decision  (which I won't be discussing) to divorce and I will have no problem standing before God after having done so and having to account for ending my marriage. Unless the question is, "Why did you stay so long?"  I might have some trouble over that one.

Bill has always, always, always been a great provider and a generous husband.  And he continues to be.  With the ongoing issues we have with Carly and her impulsive behavior, neither of us wanted me to have to leave the house every day and go to work.

So, I'm not.  Bill has ensured that the children and I will continue to live in the home they've always known as home.  I may work from home, but I don't have to.  As I said, he's being very generous.

Sad to say, but the kids have no problem at all with my decision. Ryan is the only one who even asked why.  When I told him, "I just think we will be much happier if it's just us and Dad lives somewhere else." he thought about it for a moment and said, "Well, you've got a good point there."  As I said, if God asks why I stayed so long I may be squirming for answers.

The Petition for Dissolution has been filed and he has leased an apartment close to his job. He will be moving out on the 11th ~~ which now, after almost 19 years of marriage, he hasn't even realized is my 52nd birthday.