Honor your hero with thoughts, memories, images and stories.
This memorial weekend please keep all of us Gold Star Families in your prayers! So many of us struggle daily with our loss. THIS IS OUR STORY These two kids of mine mean the world to me, more then they will ever know. When our lives changed forever on Oct 27, 2009, just 2 days before I turned 40 we got that knock on our door, and two military men stood in front of me. Ashley had stayed home from school that day because she had not been feeling well. I was sleeping on the couch and she was asleep in her room. The men came in, I still was not sure why they were there. I guess maybe because Dave was technically deployed out of Ft. Lewis Washington and I was still in Platte City, MO they were coming by to check on us, I was also still groggy from being up most of the night with Ashley. This was Dave’s 5th deployment, never did I expect to hear them tell me my husband was gone. All I remember was falling to my knees yelling NO! NO! NO! I went into shock and had tunnel vision, the world around me went dark. They were talking, but I could not hear them. I at some point I had gotten to my couch and Ashley came running in to me and sat next to me. She was only 7, how do you tell your child their daddy is gone? I held her so tight, she said I was squeezing her so tightly she felt like she couldn’t breath, I don’t remember that. I picked up my phone and made a few calls, but I’m not sure who I called. I remember them at some point taking me to the school to pick up Austin, he was only 9. I was sitting in one room looking at him through the open door while he sad in the chair looking at me while the lady was telling him what had happened. He came to him and hugged me. I think he was trying to process what he had just been told. From that point, the world around me was moving, but I was motionless. Everything became blurred around me. I was in a bubble and everything around me was muffled. The pain I felt was the greatest pain I had ever felt in my life. My heart was truly broken. Part of me died that day. For 3 years my world was black and white, all the color was completely gone. I was angry, depressed and so completely lost. I was breathing, but dead inside. I hated seeing children playing with their dads, I hated seeing families together. I was mad at God for doing this to our family, pissed because my children had to be without their father. The second year after Dave died, I decided to sign the kids and I up to go to TAPS Nationals in DC. It was the best decision I could have made. For the 1st time I didn’t feel so alone. I was with people who all walked the same journey I was on. And everyone was at different stages in their grief. It still took me another couple years before I could see color in my world again and every day is a new day. I still have my days and that’s okay. I will miss Dave every day of my life. But these two kids of mine have been my blessing and my reason to keep going. They were my lifeline. We went through some tuff stuff together and I had days where I was not sure I was strong enough to keep going. But I look at them today and I’m so proud of both of them and I know Dave would be so proud of them as well. God has blessed us with many wonderful people in our lives on this journey. Some have stayed and some were there for a short time, but most have played a roll in our healing. God has provided for us and has never left our sides. He understood our pain and stayed with us. “One Day At A Time”. I’m here today because of my kids! They gave my life purpose.
My favorite memory of Dave was when we were teenagers and my parakeet got out when Dave and other friends were at my house. The bird lands in a tree and I didn’t know what to do for my baby. Dave was my hero, he climbed the tree, got my baby and saved the day. This memory is forever etched in my mind and always makes me smile. Ironically he is an Angel with wings now.