The phone call…

Well, it has been quite a month. I think I might be finally capable of sitting down and writing about it.

One Thursday night almost exactly a month ago, we received a phone call that threw our life into a whirlwind. It was about 8:30pm when my husband’s cell phone rang. I got to it too late but noticed it was a number from Montana "Honey, it was a Montana number – I think it might be someone from your family." Within a minute or so, my cell phone rang. One of my kids looked at the caller ID and said "It’s Aunt K****" I opened my phone and answered…

Me: "Hello?"
Caller: "This is K****!"
(The voice didn’t sound like her, so I was confused…)
Me: *long confused pause*
Caller: "THIS IS K****!!"
(Still didn’t sound like her. Then I thought "OH! I bet this is my niece playing a prank on me!")
Me: "This doesn’t SOUND like K****"
Caller: *in a very frantic tone* "THIS IS K**** – MOM DIED TONIGHT!!!"
(Wait, what?! If this is my nice, then my sister-in-law is dead? I was totally confused and immediately had a sick feeling"
Me: "WHAT…?!"
Caller: "MOM DIED TONIGHT! I NEED TO TALK TO *insert my husband’s name*"
(Then I realized it WAS my sister-in-law but she was so hysterical that I hadn’t initially been able to recognize her voice. Then I realized what she had just said "My husband’s mom had died.")

I looked at my husband and I’m not sure what I said to him at that point – it’s all really fuzzy now. I know I suddenly remembered something that Jen had told me several yrs ago when her brother-in-law was suddenly killed: "You have to give a "buffer" sentence. You can’t just say "SO-and-so is dead". You have to preface it with "There’s been an accident" or "Something terrible has happened to so-and-so". I kept thinking "I have to give him a buffer sentence…" I handed him the phone and I think I said "Something has happened to your mom…" I don’t know if I actually said it or if I thought it and meant to say it.

While he was on the phone with his sister, I gathered the children. They took one look at me and knew something was terribly wrong. "What happened?!" one of them asked. I sat them all down and said "Something has happened to Grandma J*** and it’s very sad." I gave them a second to let that sink in and then told them "Grandma died tonight." They of course wanted to know how she died – but at that point we didn’t know anything.

After my husband got off the phone we all cried together. Hubby said that apparently a couple of family members had been trying to get a hold of his mom all day with no success so his sister called the local sheriff to do a welfare check and make sure she was okay. *His mom had lived by herself in a small town in Montana about an hour away from Hubby’s two sisters*

When the sheriff got to her house there was no answer and he ended up kicking in the front door and found her dead. They had then sent a police officer to Hubby’s sister’s house to notify her. Hubby’s sister had just spoken to her mom on the phone the night before. That was all the information we had at that point. Our brother-in-law’s best friend is a sheriff there and has worked in the coroners office so he was going to try to find out more information for us.

After a while, Bellie said, "Ok, if we need to pack up and go to Montana – what needs to be done? I can pack my bag and the younger kids’ bags. We need to notify co-op and a couple of other homeschool activities that we won’t be there next week. What else?"

I tell ya – that kid is amazing. At 11 years old, she could run our household. She was such a huge help.

We finally got the kids to bed and I immediately called both of my parents crying and telling them how much I loved them. Hubby was making calls and receiving calls like crazy. About 2 hours after the initial phone call, he suddenly came into the room and looked like he was going to be sick. I grabbed him and he just started sobbing. He had just received a very hysterical call from our teenage nice (the daughter of his sister who had made the original phone call).

"My mom committed suicide."

We cried for what felt like forever.

He eventually called our brother-in-law and found out that his mom had shot herself in bed and that she had left suicide notes to her kids.

So heartbreaking.

**Over the course of the next few days we sought the council of several people we respect and ended up deciding that –for now– we would NOT tell our children the cause of death.**

We eventually went to bed sometime in the wee hours of the night and decided we would spent the following day getting packed and having the car serviced and then we would head to Montana on Saturday morning.

We spent the following week in Montana dealing with the aftermath, planning and having a memorial service, and going through some of his mom’s things with his two sisters.

This has definitely been the most traumatic experience of our lives but I have to say that I honestly feel like we have survived ONLY by the prayers of so many friends and family members. The support of our church has been beyond what we would have imagined. So much encouragement, so many prayers. We have definitely felt SO loved and supported. We were incredibly blessed by our very dear friends in Montana that watched our kids for us when we needed it while we were there and even offered to clean up the "aftermath" in Hubby’s mom’s bedroom (the husband is a firefighter/EMT).

I will say that the most HIL-AR-EE-OUS thing happened at the memorial service. I will try and post that later. Suffice to say it was like an episode from "The Office…