The Phone Call...

Tonight 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, Georgia 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.

We cried for what felt like forever.

So heartbreaking.

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...

Broken Resolutions, Brady Bunch and The Bangles...

Well, I already broke my New Year's resolution to write once a week. I guess it's better to just get that out of the way early on. Since I am pretending that I'm NOT a homeschooling mom, and that everyone in the house has clean underwear that I don't need to wash, and that my personal chef will be sorting out the dinner menu for tonight...I guess I have some free time to write in my blog.

Did I mention that it's almost 4pm and I'm still in my pajamas?! "I'll have a my-insolent-children-need-a-little-Christmas-break-detox-and-had-better-learn-how-to-follow-an-instruction-stat-or-heads-are-gonna-roll on the rocks please..."

*insert big heavy worn out sigh*

By the end of the first day back to schoolwork I was looking up summer camps. No kidding! I found one that takes them YOUNG! Can you say "Goodbye ALL small children residing in this home!!"? Sadly - they wouldn't all go on the same week. The camp schedule is obviously not well thought out for moms on the cusp of a nervous breakdown.

Guess what my dad gave my 9 year old son for Christmas? A pocketknife. You know - the kid we nicknamed "Captain Hazard". Um yeah. The kid who tried to light sticks on fire in the driveway with a magnifying glass. The kid who lasted 3.5 minutes owning a slingshot before a sibling got nailed in the back of the head with some shrapnel. Yeah...that kid. I had to frisk him when we got to church on Sunday. Lo and behold he was packing heat *is a knife considered heat? Or maybe only a gun is?*

What I didn't catch was the razor-sharp sticks he had wittled for his younger brother who somehow managed to smuggle in. After church - FOUR separate people came up to me and said "Did you happen to know your younger son is jumping around doing karate-like moves with some very sharp sticks?!" I find it curious that they chose the words "Did you happen to know..." instead of the more appropriate phrasing "Did you happen to care..." Some other "more-responsible" parent than I - managed to confiscate the "alleged weapons of imminent destruction" from him shortly thereafter.

On another note. I once again exercised my inability to say no and organized and threw the all-church annual talent show and Christmas potluck. It's as if I'm a masochist... It turned out great in the end - but as usual managed to strip several years off of my life. Our family did a lip-sync to the Brady Bunch song "Change" and I was a part of a group of gals that re-wrote the Bangles song "Walk Like an Egyptian".

I leave you with those 2 videos...