A Whiskey Lullaby

Waking up was like waking up into a completely different life. A dark, shattered, lonely life. Yesterday my life was great! I was happy! I was in a good place. Life was just starting to go smooth for us. That all just disappeared over night. In one second. The world is now in slow motion. The voices around me are all muffled. Exactly how they make it out in the movies. Distant. Detached. Just. My kids didn’t know about what had happened. I had told them that daddy is at work. They were too young to question why we weren’t staying at home. As soon as I came out of the bedroom at my parents house, I knew reality had to be faced today. The news of Codys death had circulated over night and my phone was blowing up with notifications on social media and sympathy texts. Loving people that were friends of mine and Codys wanted to help in any way they could.

That afternoon people started to show up at my parents house to offer their condolences and brought meals. We all gathered in my parents backyard. That same backyard Cody and I were in just the day before. My dad put on some music. In the middle of all the chitter chatter, I get lost. Just space out. The music fills me with memories of Cody. His face. His laugh. His smile. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I hate to cry and break down in front of people but it was more powerful than I was. The company and comfort of everyone around me helped to bring me out of that trance and pull myself together again. I just couldn’t help put think… look how life is continuing. Look at how everyone around me is continuing life without you. This is too weird. I’m not about this life without you in it. It was clear to me that when Cody died… I died. I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin anymore. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I didn’t know how to live anymore. I didn’t want to live anymore. Life is moving forward without you in it all around me and I feel like I’m frozen here in time, just watching the world live.

The days after that were a little foggy in my memory. I’m sure it had a lot to do with just spacing out 98% of the day and drinking until I couldn’t feel anymore. Each day kept getting darker and darker. I got more and more lost. There were things that needed to be done right away. The funeral still had to be planned and I still needed to go clean out my trailer home. I decided it wasn’t safe to live there with just me and my kids. The front door didn’t lock or shut right. And I honestly don’t know if I could have been able to continue living where my husbands life ended and where the tragic memories are now painted all over the walls. It was safer and better on my mental health to stay with my parents until I could pull myself back together enough to be on my own again. My dad, my sister, and myself went to the trailer house to get it cleaned out on the 3rd day (I think it was). The house was left the way it was when I left it that night. Beer bottles everywhere. When I walked into the house, the smell hit me. The smell of death. My dad wouldn’t let me go back in the bedroom until he and my sister got the mattress out of the room. As I waited for them to get the mattress out, I just looked around. Memories flashing in my head of life in that trailer house. Codys on the couch playing Madden and screaming at the TV. The kids are all running around playing while I’m cooking dinner. It hit me like a ton of bricks to the chest. I literally felt my heart breaking piece by piece. A massive lump formed in my throat so big that it was uncomfortable to swallow. My chest was extremely heavy. The grief finds me and plants its roots in my chest. Planting itself deep and paying no mind to how heavy and unwanted it is. Making itself home forever.

Some of my dads friends and my friends showed up to help pack everything up. Keeping straight faces and normal conversations to keep me from breaking down. The things that my sister and dad seen in that bedroom and had to clean up wasn’t revealed to me until much later on. The bed Cody and I slept on had to be disposed of. Some carpet had to be removed that was under the bed. They did a really good job at getting everything cleaned up and removed before I went into that bedroom to pack mine and Codys things into boxes. We finished packing and left what was mine and Codys home. A now empty trailer that was once filled with life. I again felt that literal heart breaking feeling in my chest as I walked out that broken trailer door for the last time.

I told my kids about their daddy when we got back to my parents house. The funeral was nearing so it was time. My oldest, Jordan, started to cry out for his daddy. It broke the broken pieces of my heart into a million more pieces. It’s still a vivid memory to me. My youngest two were to young to really fully comprehend what I had just told them. I wouldn’t want me children to learn how their dad passed away from other people so I had told them that their daddy was playing around with a gun and accidentally shot himself. And that is why we don’t play with guns. In my eyes, it was an accident. Because “the guns weren’t loaded.” I believe that Cody was trying to get me to go back into the bedroom with him that night by making a clicking noise with the gun, not knowing that it was actually loaded. I still stick to that belief because we were told that the guns were not loaded. That Josh guy had ended up blocking me on social media later on so I do hold some resentment against him. If he had checked the guns to make sure they weren’t loaded or had told us that they might be loaded… there would be no ending to anything here. If only… I will always think those “if only” statements as long as my brain still thinks.

I had a dream that night. I still remember it to this day. I was in the trailer house laying down on the living room floor. At night. In the dark. I looked up and glanced down the hallway that lead to our bedroom. Just terrified of the dark hallway and what it leads to. The hallway is the tunnel of death. Then all of a sudden Cody shows up and lays down right behind me and spoons me. He puts his arms around me and tells me it’s OK. He’s here now. I woke up and felt lost and in a funk. But it became addicting to me to want to sleep and see him in my dreams. I would dream about him often. The dreams that would mess with me were the dreams about him saying he never died, he was just gone. Oh I can remember several dreams of him. They were so vivid and felt so real.

The funeral is set to be exactly a week after Codys death, the next Friday. So the rest of the week, Codys sister and I planned the funeral. We went to pick out an urn for Cody (since he was being cremated) with the rest of Codys family. The man in charge of helping us put this funeral together leads us all into a room full of urns and coffins. It was overwhelming. The man was talking about each urn and the prices and I just remember staring at an urn and not hearing a word this man was saying. Like it wasn’t important to me. I still felt like this wasn’t real. I couldn’t even tell you anything about what that man had to say that day. I couldn’t get my mind to focus or collect his words as sentences. I let a lot of other family members make decisions that I wish I had pulled myself together to make myself. We ended up getting Cody a square urn that had frames on all sides to put photos in. I don’t even know what photos were put on that urn. I don’t remember that part. I can’t remember a lot of things and decisions that happened in that building. I just remember the feeling.

There's just not too much I can say about the days leading up to the funeral because I mostly remember how I felt. The day of the funeral sticks in my mind fresh to this day. It was kind of like getting ready for your wedding… but backwards. Not like a divorce thing. There's nothing happy about this day. But I have lots of family and friends who are traveling from out of town to be here for this day. Just like they did when we got married. I’m even in the same bedroom getting ready in front of the same mirror I got ready in front of on the day of our wedding. Except I’m not dressing up in white today. I’m dressing in black. And today I have to keep redoing my makeup because I can’t quit crying. Except… I don’t want to come out of this bedroom because I’m nervous… I don’t want to come out because I don’t want the world to see me. I take a deep breath and look at myself one more time in the mirror. It’s like I can see right through myself. I don’t recognize myself. I open the door and walk out into the hallway with my stranger body, where I can see straight into the kitchen full of people dressed in their most depressing clothes they could find in their closets. Everything seems to be in slow motion and I still can’t seem to pull my brain together enough to actually listen to the words that people are saying. It all just sounds like a crowd of talking voices blurred together. People start hugging me as I walk by them, offering their condolences. It’s overwhelming. Each touch is like turning the faucet, my emotions break lose off their chains and go wild. I don’t want to be touched right now. I don’t even want to look at anyone in the eyes right now. I look at my kids… dressed so beautifully. Dressed like they are going to a backwards wedding. Dressed in black, but nicely and not depressing. Jordan, who was six years old at this time, looked just like his daddy with his fresh hair cut and slick suit. I knelt down on my knee and pulled out his daddys chain necklace from my suit pocket and put it around his neck. He looked down at it, feels it, and smiles. It’s time to go say goodbye now.

To be continued…