2010-04-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

Let me start by telling you a little about myself! I was born and raised in the small town of Timmins, Ontario, well at least back then it was a small town! I grew up with things like fishing, camping and hunting! It was just a normal way of life for everyone in the north and i still love those things today. I have two sisters and a younger brother who passed away from heart failure on October 21st 2007 which was also our 7th wedding anniversary that day! I have 2 kids which i had at a young age! They are now all grown up and on their own now!

I put myself through college a few years after having my daughter and got my grade 12 equivalency and then moved to Toronto for a few years to go to college! I studied Travel and tourism with the dream of becoming a flight attendant which i did eventually get to do. I worked as a flight attendant when i was about 26 for a few years, and then i worked as a waitress which is where i met my husband and later went back to working as a flight attendant again. I am not always the most self confident woman ever but i'm not one of those woman who will pretend to be someone that i'm not either! I can be very emotional most times and i've always been one to cry easily. I cry at commercials for god's sake, so that speaks for itself lol.

Ok so that's a little about me!

My life as a widow started 8 months, 17 days, 14 hours and 30 minutes ago! I work as a flight attendant and I was away on a return flight on July 20th 2009! I landed at my home base at approximately 130am and turned my cell phone on as i was waiting for the passengers to deplane. I received a text message that my husband sen to me at 1130 pm that said "BABE I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL"! I began to panic a little as it was an unusual text message for him to send to me!

You see before i get to into the events of that evening, i should maybe tell you that my husband had become addicted to crack cocaine which was completely out of character for him. How and when it all began, i do not know. I do know it started a year or so before that night and i spend every single day of my life wondering 'how on earth i didn't see it" or for lack of better explanation " i knew something was up but never in my wildest dreams did that thought ever even cross my mind". So in order for me to get back to the evening of July 20 2009, i think its better suited that i tell you about my husband and myself, how we met and what kind of relationship we had in order for you to understand the true impact of his passing on my life!

We met in a bar 16 years ago. I was working as a waitress in a strip joint and he was a customer coming in! I was going through an 'i hate men' stage and he was just coming in to have a few drinks with his friends.

He caught my eye the moment he walked in. He had big beautiful blue eyes with gorgeous long brown hair and he was as handsome as they get! I looked at my girlfriend and told her 'wow,, just one night with the one is all i want (thats the i hate men stage). So my girlfriend being the crazy girl she is, walked over to him and told him exactly that! "you see that blond over there, well she wants you for just the night! LOL.. everytime i think about that night it makes me laugh! I was 27 going on 28, never married and a few months earlier broke up with a loser who ended up being a woman beater and a cheater, so that is all that needs to be said on the 'i hate men stage'.

Well to make a long story short, he came over and talked to me later. Asked me a dozen or so times when i was going to give him my phone # and that's where it all began. We had a dinner date a week later at my place where he met my 8 yr old daughter and we were attached at the hip from that moment on! He was a truck driver, i was a waitress and we fell in love!

We moved in together a few months later, even though technically he never left my apartment from that very first night except when he went away to work.

He was a very confident man with a great sense of humour and a terrific love for life! Everybody always told us we were a match made in heaven, even my daughter! He remembered every single story of my life that i ever told him, from my childhood life up to the day we met. He would remind me of stories throughout the years that i had even forgotten about and it always amazed me! He paid attention to every single detail about me and i loved him even more everyday for those little things, even now that he is gone! He will always be 'my true love, my soulmate". Some people never find their soulmate in their lifetime but i will try not to wonder off from telling our story, so please be patient if from time to time i do venture off topic, i will be back, i just miss him, thats all!

Ok so let's get back shortly after we met! So we met in a bar and we were meant to be from that moment on! That's not to say we didnt' have our share of problems in our relationship, who doesn't?? It wasn't always great. We went through alot of hard times together but we always got through them together in the end.

I remember a little while after we had met, i went on a trip with him. We were together for maybe 7 weeks at the time and we were sitting at a truck stop having breakfast and coffee when he called home to touch base. Ok so i'll let you know now, he had the most 'screwed up family on the face of the planet and that is no exaggeration. They were very controlling of him somehow, especially his sister who put me through hell throughout all the years we were together. (you know i am writing all of this and thinking, 'this is good therapy for me") So i hope you will all read on because it does get much better as time goes on.

So he calls home and talks to his sister and she drops some bomb on him that his ex is pregnant. He had broken up with her just before i met him, of course i did not know this at the time! Well the first thought that went through my head was 'what am i getting myself into" and i really wanted to run and i think he sensed it right away! At the time, i was very independent and i had no desire to take any crap from anyone! We were on our way home from that trip anyway and i asked him to bring me home! He got a bit worried and he was afraid to let me go home that day. I remember it all like it was yesterday.I remember him telling me he was afraid to bring me home for fear that he'd never see me again.. Just the thought of his ex being pregnant made me cringe at the drama that would surely follow but he convinced me to stay with him which obviously i did! I was falling for him and there was no turning back at this point! Well the story of his ex being pregnant was untrue and it was just a story his sister made up to try to break us up! That is just a few of the many stories that followed throughout the years but I am sure i will tell you of some of them as my story continues. Some of them will shock you and if you have any kind of interest in my story, they may even piss you off!

Anyway, back to our story!

I remember the first time i met his dad, (wonderful man)! We were at his parents 35th anniversary party at a hall! I was overwhelmed and nervous to meet his family because there were a few incidents that had happened throughout the months that made me raise an eyebrow! For instance, every time his sister called him, he jumped and left to do whatever it was she wanted him to do and she did that often. Many of those times, we were doing something ourselves just the two of us and if she called, he left whatever we were doing to go! After awhile it start to aggravate me but i just dealt with it.

So we're at the hall and i walk in to an enormous amount of people! His sister was at the table set up at the front door taking tickets and i remember that she gave him a hug and never as much as said hello to me and i remember how uncomfortable that made me feel. Thank god we came with one of his friends and his girlfriend or i would have felt so out of place. I met his brother very briefly! His nieces were there but never said a word to me. At one point during the night, they came and sat on his knee (they were in their very early teens at the time) like maybe 11 or 12, both of them and they both snotted me off and never said a word to me. They just grabbed him and dragged him onto the dance floor.. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about that night but i was with him and i didn't care! So finally towards the end of the night his father came up to me and introduced himself. He was a very big man. Tall and you can just tell by his demeanor that he was a very well respected man. So he sat down beside me, we talked small talk for a few minutes which was nice but then these words of advice came out of his mouth; " Throughout the years Joanne (not giving her real name) will say things to you that will piss you right off but you're going to have to learn to not let it get to you"... Wow,, if i only knew then what i know now because as it turned out, it was advice never to be forgotten and that was the first time i met his father!

I remember a short time later, lmaoooo we went to his parents house, i believe this was the second time i met his dad and you have to remember, his dad had a way about him that commanded your attention and respect. He had a very strong personality and a way about him that attracted your full attention. So we were sitting at the kitchen table, just talking about life and whatever topics came up and he pulled out of the fridge a big freezer bag of smoked salmon and me, being the new kid on the block wanting nothing more than to be liked by his family, did whatever it took to have that exact thing, so he offered me a piece of the smoked salmon and it actually was fantastic. I loved it, until a short time later i started noticing, hmmm this doesn't quite taste right, so i looked a little closer and jesus murphy there was mold on it...... So my eyes were as big as marbles and i looked at my hubby (not married yet at this point) and whispered to him,, "babe, there's mold on it" and he laughed his head off and told his dad! All he did was scrape the mold off and handed it back to me, lmaooooooooo.. At the time that was absolutely disgusting to me but i kept eating it anyway.. oh my god that's so funny now that i think about it and we ended up laughing about that for years because his dad after many years became a very important part of my life. He became to me the dad i never had and he had my 100% full respect and i loved him dearly.

It's amazing how i'm writing this story and all these memories are coming back to me!

TO BE CONTINUED..................

October 22/ 11pm

ok so it has been months since i last came on here and now i'm ready to continue on with my story! Sorry folks, i had a few rough months but i'm ready to continue on with what i started, especially to my so far 'one follower" lol thanks for the nice comment.

As i mentioned at the beginning of this blog, i might drift from time to time to a certain year, or certain memories but i'm sure by the end of it all, you'll have a pretty good idea of what my life has been like thus far, in my now 46th year of life..

So you now know that my husband's father had a huge impact on my life! I loved him very much! When my husband was on the road, "DID I MENTION THAT HE WAS A LONG HAUL TRUCK DRIVER" so anyway, when he was on the road, i learned to spend alot of time alone and his father made a point of calling me every single day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, just to see if i was ok, if i needed anything, or most of the time it was just to talk, usually about nothing in particular but he always made me laugh! He had the greatest sense of humour but in a very dry way, if you know what i mean. You'd have to have actually known him to understand what i'm saying but picture a very tall, very big boned man with lots of hair for his age, very grey, almost whitish, with a very deep voice but a very calming voice at the same time. Make a long story short, he was a wonderful man and everybody thought the world of him, as did I!

Things were not always this way for us. My husband spent alot of years fighting and clawing his way to gain his father's respect! He always felt like he was the black sheep, which, from all the stories i've heard him tell me and from what i saw myself our first maybe 6 or 7 yrs together, he really was! His older sister was the shit disturber! You know how most families USUALLY always have at least one in there who always creates all the tension and drama, well she certainly lived up to that one.. but we'll get to that another time during this blog. His older brother, well he was ok, very funny guy, i can't really find anything to negative to say about him right now but again, i'll tell you more stories as i go on, just not today.

Ok so now you have a basic idea of what his dad was like, great man! His mother, well that is a whole new chapter and probably would require a whole new blog, maybe we could call that one, 'how to cope with the mother in law from hell" literally lol.. i don't want to actually waste too much time on her except to say most of us mothers have a natural maternal in us, well she just didn't have that and that's all there is to it. She was also a drama queen which would maybe explain where his sister got it from. I'm guessing the apple just did not fall too far from the tree.

I remember one night, we were all sitting in the garage, his parents were smokers, my husband and I were smokers as was his niece and her husband but this particular night, his parents were going through a 'no smoking in the house' phase, so we would all go out and sit in the garage, have our smoke and just talk. Sometimes we would sit in there for hours and laugh so hard.. but this particular night, his mother was drinking, 'again.. she had a drinking problem to say the least and when she was drinking she got much nastier than when she was sober, which at that time, was not very often. So we're all sitting there, having a good laugh while my husband was working on his niece's car, putting on new tires, doing an oil change and so on, (he did those things also, he loved working on vehicles) and we were all making jokes and laughing about sex,, of all subjects to be talking about with your in-laws but we were just having fun, now you have to picture this in your head ok.. we're all sitting on our lawn chairs in the garage, there were 5 of us sitting down and my husband was kneeling on the concrete changing a tire on the other side of the car listening,, when out of nowhere his mother comes out with 'yep,, when i had my kids, i should have flushed them all down the toilet while their bones were still soft"....... OMGGGGGGG!!!! I can still remember that like it was yesterday.. My mouth dropped to the floor, i immediately looked over to see the reaction on my hubbie's face and my heart was pounding so hard from the anger that this woman could just blurt something out like that without hesitation and think nothing of it while her son is right there listening! I had to actually leave the room and go inside because it was all i could do not to want to choke her.. I will never in a million years ever know what that must have felt like for him.. i did ask him about it later when he came in and he just shrugged it off as 'ahhh i'm so used to it baby, i just let it all go in one ear and out the other".. and trust me when i tell you,, this story is only one of a gazillion stories i can tell you but now you maybe have a bit of an idea of what kind of things my husband and I had to deal with.

Now! Let's get to the addiction part of this story for a bit.. I remember when i first started going out with him, back in 1995, the little triggers that i should have picked up on way back then, but you know, you're younger, you're in love and you subconsciously deny that there is maybe something to worry about! I remember noticing way back then that he used to take alot of pills mostly tylenol 3's but an awful lot of them and i did notice most times, he took them without even needing them!
I mean it was nothing for him to go through a whole prescription in a few days! He used to suffer from major migraine headaches too so there were also many times where we would go to the hospital and the only thing that ever worked for him was a shot of demerol but after the years went on, i had been with him so much that i was able to tell right away when he really truly had a migraine and when he was faking one.. and it's very hard for me now to say these things about him but an addict is an addict no matter which way you slice it.. but i loved him and still chose to ignore it even then thinking in my own mind, that it wasn't really that big of a deal. If i only knew then what i know now, i wonder if things would have turned out differently? That is a question I ask myself almost every single day!

You see, my husband took his life on July 20th, 2009! I will remember all the events of that night and the days that followed for the rest of my life and it will be a memory that feels like it was yesterday or at least 2 yrs and 3 months later, that's what it still feels like.

I remember getting the text message that night, it was 130am when i landed and I rushed to get home from the airport as fast as i could! He had disappeared on me quite a few times in that last year to crack houses so after he had been clean for almost 3 months, my immediate reaction to the text message was 'oh my god, he fell of the wagon", it was a devastating blow for me because he was doing so well, or at least i thought he was. I remember getting home, walking in the living room and the feeling of dread in your heart is overwhelming. I sat on the couch, staring out the living room window, waiting and hoping he'd pull in the driveway anytime. I must have sat there for hours, feeling totally dumb and so depressed and so worried and the emotions that you go through are just so difficult to explain. You feel anger, you feel worry, you feel helpless and so much more and your heart pounds and you cry and you cry until it feels like you have no more tears but you always do!

When i first got home, i noticed he had left his cell phone on the coffee table and his cigarettes and his lighter that my daughter had bought him for his birthday just a few months before and he was so proud of that lighter, she had it engraved for him and he carried it with him everywhere he went, so it seemed a bit odd for him to leave these things behind but still for some reason, i thought he was gone to a crack house again.

(thought) I remember leaving for work that afternoon. It was about 2 in the afternoon, he was outside, he had his Harley started and he was getting ready to head out for a ride, it was a great day for a ride that day. I remember loading my stuff in my vehicle and walking over to him and giving him a kiss as i always did before i left for a flight like it was any other day, telling him i loved him and going about my day, never knowing that was the last time i would ever see him again. Hard to even think about, even now! If only you knew ahead of time what was to happen, i would have made that kiss more special, i would have hugged him longer, i would have made a better effort to tell him just how much i did love him, if, if, if,, those are things that go through your mind all the time!

(back to that morning) The more i sat there and waited and stared out the window the more i thought about his cell on the table, and his cigarettes, my husband was the kind of man who wouldn't even walk to the end of the driveway to put out the garbage without his pack of smokes in his back pocket or in the pocket of his jacket and still to this day, i don't know why it took me so long to clue in and i just got a thought now as i'm telling you this story, what if he was still alive while i'm sitting on the couch waiting for him to come home? My heart is now pounding because this is a thought that never crossed my mind until now! ok i need a break for a bit folks. I will be back in the morning to continue!

TO BE CONTINUED.......

After several hours of sitting on the couch staring out the window, at the same time i kept thinking it was very odd that he left his cell phone and his smokes on the coffee table and he had them perfectly placed next to each other but in my mind i still thought he was in a crack house and i was worried sick thinking, is he going to overdose from taking so much, is he going to have an altercation with one of the other users, who knows (you have to remember, i know nothing about crack other than what he told me and what i see in the movies). By about 7 or 8 in the morning, i can't remember all the exact time but now i am starting to go into a panic. I went into our bedroom and started looking through our night drawers and noticed in his night stand he had his wallet in there which again he would never leave without it but still at this point, i'm still thinking he's in a crackhouse. A few more hours go by and you have to remember, he's done this several times before so i had become a bit used to the routine. Usually when he disappeared to the crackhouse, i wouldn't hear from him for days. I would call him on his cell phone for days and he would text me maybe once to say 'i'm on my way home' but it would be days before he finally did! I had lost so much weight in the last year of his life from all the stress. I had went from being 115lbs to 96 lbs which was ridiculously skinny.

Ok so i've been pacing the floors and staring out the window now since approximately 2 in the morning and it is now 11am, i'm frantic, i'm so exhausted, i've been crying for literally hours on end, then all of a sudden for some strange reason i think to myself (in total panic) 'what about the shotgun in the spare room, is it still there". I went into the spare room where it was always kept and in the case and i notice, OMG the case is there but it's empty! Now i am literally in terror stricken and i'm having a complete freak out. I literally tore our whole house apart looking for that gun, I destroyed our bedroom closet, close were everywhere, i looked everywehre thinking ok maybe he moved it somewhere else, so i tore the house apart grasping at the hope that i will find it but after an hour of frantically searching, it was nowhere to be found.. I was freaking out. I immediately called our good friend whom my husband was working for at the time and they were good friends for many years (in case you're wondering, he's no longer working as a truck driver at this point, he had missed too many loads earlier in the year and even though he was an owner operator, they fired him so he went back to working construction and we hadn't made a truck payment on the transport in months)

I called our friend and told him the gun was missing and i remember him telling me 'ok you need to call 911 now and report him missing' which i did and i swear to god within less than an hour they were knocking at my door. Remember, you have an addict now with a 30 odd 6 rifle, a former military man and a man who is specialized in every special training a former military can have) so he's considered a threat to the public. So the officer questions me (still, even at this point, still in my mind for some strange reason i'm believing he's in a crackhouse and thought maybe he took the gun and sold it for crack) wow, i was in so much denial!

I was questioned by the officer in charge of my husband's case for maybe an hour about what was going on in his life and about the addiction and absolutely everything but the officers were all so very kind, and so understanding and very for lack of better words 'gentle'.

They went into our home after asking me several questions and searched our whole house. They left for a short time when they were done, explained to me they were going to put an missing persons on the news and my husband was all over the news for almost 3 days, his picture, the time he was last seen, everything. Later that afternoon the officers came back again with more officers and explained to me that they were going to be setting up a command post down the road and discouraged me from leaving the property, (i had no idea why). They searched our back yard (we had about an acre or so back yard with a pond way out back and there was a golf course behind our yard and to the left of the golf course was fencing that seperated it from farm land. The walk from our back door to the fencing by the golf course was literally maybe a 2 minute walk!

I remember having friends over by my side and my daughter who was 23 at the time was living with us and two kids downstairs in the basement. I should mention to you that my daughter and my husband were very close, they had their tiffs like stepdaugher and stepfather would have but they were more like daugher and father than anything else and she was home when he went missing. She told me what had happened when he left the house. She said he kept busy all day MOM. He finally fixed the washing machine that i had been bugging him to fix for months (omg i am now crying so hard writing this now), he fixed all the little things around the house that needed fixing, she said sometime that night (not sure exactly what time), she was sitting at her computer and a few weeks earlier he had built her a gate to seperate her room from the stairs because we had two big malamutes who had just had puppies and their pen was set up beside her room so he built her a wooden gate so the dogs did not get in her room) but she said he came to my gate which was next to her computer desk and she said he just looked at me and stared at me for a few minutes but remember, she's 23, and at that age it's all about msn and the internet and their friends so she just did what most kids do, not paid attention and went on doing her thing..
She said after he stared at me for awhile, he wrote a line on my gate that said "when it seems like there is no light, there is". She said he then went upstairs and went in the bedroom and stayed in there for about 2 hours. She said later she went to go upstairs to use the washroom and she noticed it looked like he was hiding something and put it outside on the back porch next to the back door, she said she thought it was odd but knowing about the addiction she just assumed he had been using and he always acted strange when he was like that which he did. Later i guess around midnight he went downstairs and told her he was going to the local pub down the road and to tell me thats where he would be when i got home and then he left!

The police searched our back yard and some of the golf course that day until the sun went down then they went home but that day there was maybe about 6 or 7 police officers with their dogs searching the property and the surrounding area and found nothing at this point but they had gotten a few tips of a man who fit the description a few times in the city but obviously it wasn't him! I remember my girlfreind staying the night with me, she even slept by my side that night, however i did not get much rest, maybe a few minutes here and there. You know it's strange because i can't remember too much about how i felt those days other than numb.. like it was all just a really bad nightmare and i was going to wake up anytime. I remember only feeling foggy, if that makes any sense.

The next day his brother showed up from up north to help with the search along with my husband's old friend that he had known for many many years and was like an older brother to him. I remember the police coming over again eventually only this time (it was tuesday) they came with much more police officers and they had argo's that went in the water also, tons of dogs, there were so many police officers, and canine units and vehicles in my yard it was overwhelming. They were there all day that day again until the sun went down. My brother in law, my h
usband's friend and even myself went searching the fields in the back, the golf course, we walked for so long. We walked through the farm fields for miles that day and to this day i think to myself, THANK GOD WE DIDNT' FIND ANYTHING! So that day also he was not found. I remember sitting on the step of our front porch at one point talking to the officer who was in charge and stillllll in my mind i was thinking he was in a crackhouse or at this point somewhere wondering around scared.. Wow, the more i think about it now the more i realize how much i was in denial! I just refused to think the worse, however i do remember at some point thinking of how much i actually prayed that he was in a crackhouse this time. Who would have thought i would have prayed for that?

Well that day also passed and he was nowhere to be found and still his face was all over the news! Again my girlfriend stayed with me the night.

I don't remember waking up the next morning, i just remember bits and pieces of the next day (wednesday july 23 2009) I remember sitting on the steps of our front porch watching all the police officers and police cars going by over and over, i remember that my daughter was at the park with her friends, and i remember at one point in the afternoon watching the command post truck drive by my house which i thought was strange, i remember seeing all the police cars leaving the command post and drive by our house and i remember wondering what was going on? I remember pacing the front yard for hours in a fog, i remember vaguely the neighbours giving me a hug, i remember all the people in my front yard (friends mostly) and i remember at around 5pm that afternoon seeing the officer who was in charge of my husband's case pull into our driveway, get out of his car and walk up to me and he said he had bad news, my husband had been found, he had taken his life, he shot himself in a little patch of trees only steps away from the fencing that separated the golf course from the farm field! It was only a 2 minute walk from our back door! I remember walking away crying so hard i could not breathe and then eventually just dropping to the ground in hysterics.. I was so numb! This could not have happened! This did not happen and i remember yelling 'noooo'' and just crying. I was told later ( i honestly don't remember much of this part) but i apparently took off running down the road where i eventually collapsed and my husband's friend took off in his truck chasing me and pulled over picked me up and carried me to his truck and back home. I sat on the ground in my front yard for hours just staring up at the sky in total and complete disbelief!

TO BE CONTINUED... I WILL TRY TO WRITE A BIT EVERYDAY!

my life as a young widow