After

October 1st, 2017. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I had gotten up in the morning, had some coffee, and went to the garden to clip some dahlias that were in full bloom.  Later that morning, my husband and I decided to go out and ride our ATV’s to enjoy the lovely early fall weather. While we were out riding, along the way I stopped to take pictures of some wild flowers and a towering majestic tree. As we rode along the path I thought I could hear my phone ringing from the pocket of my hoodie, but I wasn’t sure so I waved to my husband and we stopped so I could check. My phone was ringing and had been ringing apparently for several missed calls. It was my son in law, Trip. I had just spoken to my daughter, Roxanne, the morning before and knew she wasn’t feeling well, just a cold or allergies. But I was somewhat confused by the string of missed calls and was telling my husband about it when my phone rang again.  I answered and Trip said, in an out of breath voice, that he had been out with our grandson and when they got home they found our daughter, Roxanne, “unresponsive.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Have you called 911?”

“Yeah, they say she’s unresponsive,” he replies.

“What are you telling me?!?” I ask.

His response is unintelligible. I thrust the phone at my husband because I am quite literally and figuratively unable to hear what he is saying, as if he tells someone else, and I don’t have to hear the words, they won’t be true. Sean looks at me quizzically as he takes the phone. “Roxanne is unresponsive,” is all I can muster.  He takes the phone and begins asking our son in law what’s going on. I hear him ask to speak to one of the paramedics. But this is all happening like I’m underwater. I am Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I hear him say, “We’re on our way! We’re about 45 minutes away but we’re coming now!” He tells me to get back on the four-wheeler and drive as fast as I can back to our vehicle. It’s a blur; we’re racing back to the truck. Sean puts the ATV’s away as I pace back and forth. We jump in the truck and Sean drives like we are on fire, hazard lights on, speeding, running red lights, driving over median strips. I call my daughter, Nadine, who lives closer to Roxanne than we do. I shout at her that she needs to get to Roxanne’s house. “She’s unresponsive!” Nadine replies, confused and stunned, saying she and her fiancé will get there as soon as they can. My phone rings again, Sean answers it. All I know is that it’s a police officer. I hear him saying, “We’re on our way!” And all I can say, over and over, is, “No. No. No. No. No.” I know that whatever was said was not good news but I can’t ask. I can’t make my mouth form the words… But I know. “No. No. No. No. No,” is all my mind and voice will utter.

We arrive at Roxanne’s house in her lovely suburban neighborhood, ambulances and police cars and neighbors on the sidewalk. We walk across her lawn and a police officer greets us, serious and solemn, “I’m so sorry about your daughter.” Sean and I collectively gasp. Strangled sobs escape, as I begin my mantra again but more panicked now, “NO! NO! NO! Nonononononono!” I am vaguely aware that I am being ushered inside to avoid a neighborhood spectacle. My legs are not firm below me, I’m falling faster and faster down that rabbit hole. Questions are being asked. “Were you aware of anything going on with your daughter? Had she been sick? What medications was she taking? When did you speak with her last?” The same questions, different people.

 

“Where is she?” I ask. She’s in her bedroom, where she had been found, in bed, unresponsive. “I want to see her.”

“You can’t see her now. The CSI team has been called so no one can go in there until they have done their investigation.”

CSI? Is this real? There doesn’t seem to be an apparent or obvious cause of death. “No kidding. She’s a 27 year old woman with no long term health issues. She had a f***ing cold!” Did I say that out loud? Where are the children? My son in law is wandering around the house. One minute he’s sobbing, the next looking lost, then he’s talking gibberish about just giving her pills so she can sleep. He can’t sit still. He moves from kitchen to garage, back into the house. Every time one of us goes to him to make sure he’s ok, he stays for a minute then has to get up and move again. The children walk in, from where I’m not sure. They’re confused by all the chaos and the situation in general. They climb onto my lap. A chaplain arrives. Nadine and Nick arrive. Sean is calling family. They begin to arrive. There is bewilderment and disbelief and raw emotions. There are reassurances from EMT’s and police officers. “They worked on her a very long time.” “We did everything we could.” “There was just nothing we could do.” “It was too late.” “She was already gone.” My mouth is drier than I have ever experienced. Losing her has actually sucked me away, I am shriveling in her kitchen. I am disconnected and floating through time and yet I have a stone in my core that is so heavy I may not be able to rise again.

When the CSI team is done, they ask us to get everyone together in the family room because they’re going to be bringing Roxanne out. They don’t want anyone to get upset. My husband goes to one of them and asks if we can see her before they take her. They have a whispered discussion upstairs and the officer returns. He says, “You can’t see her now. You don’t want to see her now. She’s been through a lot and you don’t want to see her like this.” I am sleep walking. I’m in a fog. A fog I shall not arise from ever. But my grandchildren are staring blankly. Their little minds can’t grasp what’s happened. In the blink of an eye their reality has been yanked out from under their little feet.  When they take Roxanne away, our son in law retreats to the bedroom and won’t come out. This is the beginning of “after.”

But if I thought I was tumbling down the rabbit hole then, “after” turns into a journey that would shock even Alice. So much has happened since that dreadful and tragic day, things that none of us could have ever even imagined. I entered my 50th year of life in November. I have been faced with numerous tragedies and extraordinary circumstances in my lifetime. The main lessons that I have learned through these experiences is that change is truly the only constant and life turns on a dime, swiftly and sometimes brutally. I thought that all of these incidents had prepared me for just about anything that life could throw my way. I was wrong. Nothing prepares you for losing a child, under any circumstance. But when circumstances arise that pull you even further down the rabbit hole, it becomes almost impossible to go through the “normal” grieving process.

Roxanne had not been feeling well for a week or so before she died. It seemed as though it was just an upper respiratory virus, the normal bugs that come when kids go back to school in the fall. She had called me the day before to vent her frustration about feeling so rotten. “I just wanted to call and whine to someone for a minute. I haven’t complained about being sick but I’m just tired of feeling like this.” I empathized with her and suggested that maybe seasonal allergies were adding to her misery. I asked if she wanted me to come over or if there was anything I could to do for her. “No,” she said. “I just wanted vent to you.” I told her I loved her and to call me if she needed me. And that was the last conversation I had with my daughter.

An autopsy had to be performed on Roxanne since there was no obvious cause of death the day that she died. We knew that she had been sick, but she wasn’t gravely sick. She just seemed to have an upper respiratory virus. Trip called us after the autopsy was complete. He said that the medical examiner had told him that Roxanne had had pneumonia but they couldn’t determine a definite cause of death until the toxicology report came in. That could take up to six weeks. Roxanne had had pneumonia a year prior. So we accepted that this was most likely the cause of her death. She was obviously sicker than she had led us to believe.

Over the following weeks life became a blur, a shadowland where our family had to make decisions about everything from whether to continue with wedding plans to whether or not to get out of bed for the day. What were we going to do with the grand children for Halloween? Who was going to host Thanksgiving?  We received phone calls about our grand child acting out in school and Nadine’s wedding gown being ready for her fitting. Trip had called his aunt, who lived halfway across the United States, and asked her to come stay with him to help with the children. But even with her assistance, our son in law’s behavior became erratic. One day he was in a hole he couldn’t dig himself out of, the next day he was almost manic, saying he could see the light and had found a path. He called us and other family members at all hours of the day and night. He claimed he needed guidance with the household finances and childcare and schools. I began seeing a grief therapist and I begged him to start seeing someone because he desperately needed professional help managing his grief and loss. The grand children also needed to see someone. They were confused and lost in this new alternate universe in which they found themselves. I looked up therapists near their home, several different therapists and groups. I sent links to their bios and profiles so he could choose the ones that he was most comfortable with. I sent their contact information. I started keeping a journal because my anxiety was out of control. I felt like I was being pulled apart from all different directions on the inside and had to maintain a calm demeanor exteriorly. Our family was frazzled and walking a razor’s edge. I felt like I had to keep it together or we’d all splinter into a thousand fragments.

As the days marched forward, Trip became more flighty and suspicious. We had always helped Roxanne and Trip financially because we wanted them to be able to raise their children in a safe and stable environment. But Trip said that he needed more help financially. He wanted to hire a nanny, he wanted to send his older daughter, Irisa, to a private school. He wanted his aunt to leave, to go back home, he didn’t need her help anymore, she was driving him crazy. His behavior was erratic and irrational. He said he wanted our help but when we tried to help or give advice he always had an excuse as to why his way was better or why he didn’t want the type of help we were offering. For example, we set up an account with an agency to look for nannies. But he found a string of different nannies through “friends” but none stayed longer than a week or so.

Our daughter, Nadine, got married at the beginning of December. One of the nannies brought the children to the rehearsal dinner while Trip went to pick up his oldest son for the weekend. The next night after the wedding ceremony, Trip wanted to leave before the reception began, even though the the kids were part of the wedding party. He was “too sad” to stay and enjoy the evening. So we suggested that the nanny take him home, then she could come back and pick up the kids. He told us she wasn’t supposed to drive after dark. “But she was driving the children around after dark last night?” I asked. Then he just broke down into tears. In fact, whenever he didn’t have an answer or didn’t want to talk about something, that was his automatic response: tears. So the children stayed with us and Trip and the nanny left.

The grandchildren stayed with us often during this time. We had always had a close relationship with them. They’d come spend the weekend with us occasionally while Roxanne and Trip went away or had plans for the weekend. We hosted their birthday parties at our house. They went on vacation with us during the summer. So it was natural for them to want to stay with us and vice versa. They were a part of Roxanne, all that we had left of her.

Sometime after the wedding, but before Christmas, Trip heard from the medical examiner about Roxanne’s toxicology report. He called to tell us that Roxanne had died of an accidental overdose. “What?!? What are you talking about? What were you guys doing?!?” was my reaction. It was like a punch to the gut. His response was that he had never seen Roxanne do any drugs, except the occasional pot smoking. He said he thought that “they” were lying. “They” were asking him all kinds of questions. “They” were trying to set him up because he was a convicted felon. Actually, he had been convicted, years before, of selling drugs to an undercover police officer; in fact, the same drugs on which Roxanne had overdosed. But his involvement with drugs was a one time mistake. He had served his time, learned his lesson, grown as a person!…

There I go, further down the rabbit hole.

What in the name of all that is holy is going on?!?

Breathe, just breathe, in and out, in and out. The holidays are coming, we have to keep it together for our children and for our grand children. Trip is not in a place emotionally to be able to handle the holidays. There’s no way he can decorate the house, purchase Christmas presents, wrap Christmas presents, plus do all the other things that need to happen on a day to day basis. We just need to get through the holidays and then we will sit down with Trip and get to the bottom of this. So we, Roxanne’s family, took the kids to the annual Nutcracker show. We met at their house and decorated the Christmas tree while Trip stayed upstairs in his bedroom. We bought all of the children’s Christmas presents and delivered them to Trip. We hosted Christmas dinner at our house, and kept the children afterward for a week.

Our 13 year old step-granddaughter, Irisa, had been living with Roxanne and Trip. And since Roxanne’s death, she had been taking on a lot of the responsibilities around the house, too much as far as I was concerned. But again, we were “making it through the holidays” and then we were going to address all these concerns we had. Then shortly after the New Year, three months after Roxanne’s death, I received a call from our granddaughter’s mother. She said she was going to go get Irisa because it was just too much for her. I totally agreed, it was definitely too much for a 13 year old girl to have to handle, especially with her father’s unstable behavior. Her mom told me Irisa was concerned I’d be upset if she left. I assured her that I completely understood. So on January 15th, three and a half months after Roxanne died, Irisa’s mom went to pick her up and bring her back home with her. In the car on their way home, Irisa’s mom called me and said, “I think you need to go over to Trip’s house. There is some craziness going on over there.” I try to get more information but she says she thinks I should just pay him a visit.

So my husband and I get ready to go over to Trip’s house. We call Roxanne’s uncle who lives just around the corner from her house. We ask him to meet us there and possibly take the kids to lunch because we don’t know what we’re walking into. We drive to Roxanne’s house, arriving around 12:30-1:00 in the afternoon. We go to the door and ring the doorbell. The children, who are five and seven, open the door wearing underpants, p.j. tops, and crazy hair. Then my five year old granddaughter says, “Daddy’s friend, Vanessa, is here.”

To be continued…

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.