The Pager Buzzed

I will completely warn you now, this will be a long post. Today commemorates one of my worst days ever. Not the worst, the funeral was the worst, but it’s right up there in the top 5.

Today was the day the pager went off for a general, important meeting. A meeting on 8am on a Sunday morning. There is only one thing that can’t wait until Monday morning and OMG who is it?

I can remember it vividly because I’ll be honest in this post. The night before we had an awesome house-warming party. I met a few more wives and it was so much fun. I was high on Diet Pepsi and not drinking for once. I was running people around on errands. Alcohol runs, food runs and we even ran to my friend’s Mom’s house to pick their kid up that night. lol I was on my diet pepsi roll and freaking everyone out because they still didn’t know me well enough to know that I wasn’t stockpiling blackmail. Goodness really? Believe me, I’ve left a lot around to blackmail me, I don’t do that.

So this leads me to the fact that in the morning I was feeling awesome and hubby was not. He had a huge hangover and I barely got him to check the page. He wasn’t with it so he didn’t really say anything about it, yes I may not be hungover, but I still really like to sleep. lol I didn’t ask, figured it was OT being called. Then the phone rang and of course I’m now listening. It’s one of our best friends and his wife is HR. They don’t have info, but he suggests that hubby gets in the shower and goes to the meeting.

While hubby is in the shower, his phone rings again and it’s his other best buddy. I talk to him a little bit to pass on messages. I understand that something major has happened and I’m so thankful, yes thankful and i will not regret it EVER, that we’ve now talked to our two boys and it wasn’t them. I will never apologize for that, you definitely start circling up and pulling in your loved one’s.

The kids weren’t even up when he got back from the meeting. We live in district and I don’t think he was gone 20 minutes. My hubby is not a crier. He’s the calm, cool, and collected, mellow guy. He couldn’t stop crying. I was worried how he even got home. OMG I didn’t want to ask. I really didn’t. I had so many people running through me head. I just knew it was someone from the party that I had let drive home. I totally knew it. I double checked everyone before they left, but I was so worried. I really didn’t want to ask, but he made me ask as I held him. You don’t hold up 6’3″ 265 very well when you are 5’7″. lol

He said it was Chief and again I won’t apologize for the instance of relief I had for it not being someone I am close to. I just won’t, I’m human and so are you. I was not close with the chief because we are still a little new, but it wasn’t my boys I’m with every week. I had that short spat of relief before it weighed in on me. OMG, our Chief is dead. Our chief that personally hired my husband just a little over a year ago. Our Chief that is involved in everything our department does and really knows what is going on. Our Chief that everyone loves and not a single soul ever has a bad thing to say about is dead. This man who has built an empire of a fire department is gone. It was huge, seriously, seriously huge.

Hubby has never dealt with death. His last close relative passed when he was 19 and he didn’t do well with it. I worry about our parents passing because he just has no concept of how to deal with the emotions. So I worried, I had no idea what to expect. I let him go back to bed to sleep. Our daughter was away camping with some friends for a week thankfully. I..was supposed to go to a beloved Great-Aunt’s memorial which is another story altogether. So I called my parents and they understand that I couldn’t explain what had happened yet (we were in media lockdown) but that I did need them to take the youngest. They totally understood that I just couldn’t go, that it was that bad. I also couldn’t tell my Dad as I didn’t want him going to one memorial and grieving a brand new death. It was one of the rare times later I’ve had my Mom thank me. She appreciated the fact that I didn’t tell my Dad. (fyi, my dad took it so hard he couldn’t even go to the funeral. Again, another story there)

So I dropped off the youngest and I hit the grocery store. I had no idea how hubby would take this. I bought and bought. I was ready to feed a family. In my family, we get together as many as possible. We get together and we hug. So I was prepared for that. I cooked like I’ve never cooked before. roflmao I joked about the Italian I didn’t know I had in me. lol I made so much food and I left it open to have everyone over. I asked if he wanted me to invite them over? Do you want me to call? No, he just wanted to hang out. We watched movies, we watched tv shows, we ate, we drank, we just WERE.

I had the internet up cause it always is. I’m an addict. lol But he had moved over and was laying on my lap so the laptop was on the coffee table. We knew they were only going to be able to keep the media off of it for so long and they had hit way over a usual mark. I’ll say kudo’s for the media for letting that happen, thank you. It is huge to have a Chief die on the job so to let us all deal a little before breaking in with the news was very human of you.

I remember him breaking down again as the text went out that they had returned the body to camp. This was well over 24 hours from the time he passed. This is how bad the story is. I will never post the story of his recovery and their rescue attempt as they did not follow procedure I’m sure. Hubby barely made it through telling me about it later when they found out. The jumpers went in to try and recover him immediately and I am so thankful that none of their lives were taken as he was most certainly gone at that point already. Smoke jumpers are true heroes and adrenaline junkies from hell. lol That’s a good thing

I digress! Told you this would be long. I had no room to deal with any emotions on what was happening. Except for the relief that it wasn’t one of my boys. I had only met the Chief a few times, he was an awesome man and really cared about everyone and LOVED his job. But I had no personal connection with him so I was able to back off a little bit and help hubby. Plus, it’s what I do. If you are hurting, then I shut my emotions off and I help you deal.

More to come and I recount the 2 weeks of absolute hell before the funeral happened. Our personal/relationship hell did not end after the funeral, it was well after that, but the funeral was horrible for me, truly, truly the worst day of my life, but yet again, the brotherhood that surrounded me after was so amazing it’s hard to focus on all that horrible. I’ll post happy tomorrow, I PROMISE!

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