His funeral was attended by hundreds—I was just devastated. Grief was overbearing. I played with left over morphine pills, a prescription we had just filled. I tried to give them back so the pharmacist to give to someone who could not afford the pills, but that was against the law so for months I played with them and wondered who could raise Chad if I decided to swallow them. I attended a widow’s group but they were so much older than me and it was difficult to relate. My hysterectomy added to the depression and the only thing I kept thinking about when I got into these funks was, this is not the way Bruce would be handling this, and so Bruce taught me a lot about living but more about dying.
He never complained and although he was a fighter his attitude was the key to his life. He used humor and enjoyed the moments. After many months of therapy and support groups and sheer will to honor him I realized life is worth living so that you can serve as a model for someone enduring their own grief. There is a master plan we are never privy to. Seventeen years is a long time to spend with a soul mate but life goes on ... Chad is now completing his Master’s in Business and I remarried (never believing for one moment, that I could even consider something like that in the future, at the time of Bruce’s death).
I prayed most nights to share my life with someone who could love my son as much as he loved me, and while I was praying I asked that he be tall, handsome, would be nice and financially stable would certainly be a blessing too! When you have a great marriage to begin with I think it is natural to yearn for that again as you begin to heal. And three years later, Gary, six feet, seven inches, gentle as he is tall, with a heart so big he loved Chad and me the way we wanted to be embraced was brought into my life—divine intervention—yes, I think so ... never give up, never stop praying and always believe that God has a master plan for you that you are never privy to. Just believe that he is always by your side watching over you with beautiful wings of glory!
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