The Story. And the End

Humans are naturally curious. When they find out a 36 year old husband and father of 5 had their life taken so suddenly, obviously everyone wants to know the details. The details don’t change anything, but they do help in understanding the scope of the grief I’m drowning in. This will be long and unbelievably hard to type, but typing it is far easier then having to repeat and relive it over and over.

Our story, it’s a bit of a crazy one. I grew up with my husband, Sam, as he was my older brother’s best friend since grade school. He has always been a version of family to me, but it wasn’t until we were in our teens (16&19) that we somehow, out of the blue, fell in love. Fast forward a few years, we had 3 amazing boys and he was going through an IBEW apprenticeship to become a power lineman. Early years in marriage with little ones and a husband working away was no joke, that shit was hard, but we never gave up and worked hard on our marriage. In 2014 we decided to become foster parents and after loving and helping a handful of children, in 2017 we were blessed to adopt our son and daughter making us proud parents to 5 children aged within 5 years of each other. Our family had such an incredible bond and our marriage was one that would be hard to believe was real if you didn’t know us. Soulmates. I have said it many times, but it’s the best I can come to describing it. Truly soulmates.

We lived our lives to the fullest we could, always running from one adventure or project to the next. Our biggest and latest project was building our dream home. In spring of 2022 Sam and I started work on our home as we did half the work ourselves and had the contractor do the rest. With it being a 7 bedroom- 4,000 sq ft home with an 1,100 garage attached, we had our work cut out for us! But we had a dream of all of our children having their own room in our house on the hill where they could play all day in the lake. With that dream we worked our asses off all day and night that summer to finish on time. October 2022 we got to finally move in and things were as close to perfect as they could ever be. At the time, my dad was fighting cancer, which was his 4th battle total, and that was petrifying and incredibly hard to watch his suffering. My parents have always been by our side and to say we were all super close to each other is an understatement. Sam had such a positive nature and was always ensuring me everything was going to be just fine. He was, as always, my rock.

12/11/22 There was a massive snow storm happening. It was coming down fast and it wasn’t long before dispatch called Sam to come work on power outages. Not one to turn down outages, Sam took off to go help. That night I cleaned out the garage and happen to find my birthday present hidden (my birthday is the 16th), a beautiful pair of boots I had wanted. I sent him pictures of me parading him around thanking him and teasing him that I found them. Around 1am I decided I was going to go shovel out a path so when he got home at night he wouldn’t have to trudge through waist deep snow. This is when I realized he had taken his beloved little VW beetle that I hated so much instead of his giant truck. I was so pissed that he thought taking it in a snowstorm was a good idea, but I instead just texted him to make sure he would take a company truck home when the outages were over.

12/12/22 Sam had worked all night restoring power and got in at 9am in a company truck as promised. He slept until just after noon and then leapt in to help dig out ours and our neighbors property from the snow. We were out watching the sun set as we finished the last bit of snow. Dinner and a warm bath together and he was out like a light.

12/13/2022

Tuesday

Such a normal day. Sam left for work, a kiss and goodbye and he was gone. He drove the company truck to work and called me many times throughout the day just to say hi, as always. I wore my new boots to go to town and run errands, hoping I could show them off to him in person when I got home. He ended up running to a friends house after work to pick up a new computer he bought for me to start my realtor career. He was on the way home from that when I Facetimed him from the store with questions about Christmas gifts. Seeing he was driving, I rushed him off the phone and told him that we would just go together when I got home.

7:05pm

Life 360 detected a crash on Sam’s phone. After Life 360 called him with no response, they called authorities and then called my phone. Juggling things at the checkout and not recognizing the number, I let it go to voicemail. Just as I was pulling out of my parking spot I pressed play on their message.

In that moment, I knew. How I knew, I have no clue, but I felt in that moment my soul was ripped from my body. I saw his location in the app and in a blur I sped through town, calling my mom screaming at the top of my lungs. I tried his phone over and over. I called my mom back and screamed at her to call the troopers to see if they knew anything and immediately hung up to try his phone again. I don’t remember doing it, but saw on my phone’s browser history many days later that I had been desperately trying to search for the trooper’s number and failed.

My dad called me back. He simply said, in an extremely uncharacteristically firm tone- “Mandy, pull over”. I screamed as I saw the lights flashing off the low clouds up ahead and pushed the gas harder. Just as I crested the top of the hill, with a police barricade and a massive amount of emergency vehicles at the bottom, an ambulance with no lights on slowly drove passed me. I screamed out my window at the officer. I told him my husband was in the yellow bug, please god tell me he is ok. I knew he wasn’t. I felt he had left me already. And yet the words he said so calmly may as well stopped my heart as well.

“I’m sorry ma’am, he has passed.”

Words said so simply and yet my brain refused them. Things were blurred, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t move. I know part of me was working, because I somehow called family for help, but to this day I have no recollection of it. I found myself in the middle of the street, laying on the icy road screaming at the police officer that he had to be wrong. His next words to me will forever ring in my head and make me nausea. “Big, red beard, orange hoodie.” If you could describe my sweet Sammy in 2 ways, that was it.

The next thing I remember is my dad. Frail from chemo and lack of nutrition, he found the strength to drag my inconsolable body to the car, buckle me in and wrap me in his arms. Not a man to ever, ever show emotion, I will never forget his sobs that echoed mine. Just like I will spend the rest of my life replaying the looks on our kids faces as they walked through the door.

I learned later what had happened. After I hung up with Sam, he called our good friend just to chat. I will be forever grateful to know that he was happy at the end and that it was instant, yet I’m so deeply saddened our friend has the burden of the weight of being on the line at that moment. A moose walked out from behind a giant snow berm. Sam only had enough time to say “hold on” before impact. Due to his injuries, it’s believed to be in that moment he was gone. His vehicle passed the center lane, struck an oncoming vehicle and then onto the guardrail on the opposite side. After that, was silence.

My birthday was 3 days later, our son’s 5 days later and then came Christmas. There I sat, paralyzed in grief. A few days before Sam’s service we learned my Dad’s cancer treatment was unsuccessful, there was nothing more to be done. I had to tell my kids the day after their dad’s service that their beloved Bapa would soon join their father. A daddy’s girl through and through, I did my best to put on my brave face and show him I would be ok so he could be at peace. February 21st 2023, another Tuesday, I held my hero’s hand as he slipped away.

There aren’t words enough to describe the pain I feel. My very soul has been ripped from my body and what’s left of me lives only for my 5 absolutely incredible kids.

That’s the story. And the end.