"Unbroken Threads: A Woman's Journey Through Hardship and Purpose"

Mourning

The Pandemic has been quite the ordeal. Traumatic to say the least. Thankfully, life is finally getting back to normal. Kin's business is out of debt thanks to the funds from the Government. (We made lemonade, Y'all!) No more rentals or evictions, we have purchased our first home and for the first time in our marriage I am not in fear of losing anything and/or everything. Things are great between me and my husband.

As a part of our new bedtime routine, we kneel in prayer together with our children before going to bed, always ending with I love you and a group hug. It's weird right? It was weird for me initially because we had never prayed together. With years of discord in the household, we had stopped saying I love you, altogether. Being in a better place is revitalizing.

Kin and I have made plans to travel together as soon as the last two kids go off to college. Now that the Pandemic is over, that shouldn't be too long from now. Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today?

You know, that's the thing about making plans, the unexpected doesn't care about your plans.

Today turned into tomorrow. I woke to a bright beautiful sunrise. It was a good day...until it wasn't. I turned over to notice that Kin was still in the bed which was unusual for him since he went into the office before sunrise every morning. I leaned in to kiss him on the cheek and noticed that he wasn't breathing. I instantly knew that he was gone. 

I performed CPR anyway. I remained as calm as I could and dialed 911 as I continued to try and revive him to no avail. Within minutes the EMS people arrived and took over. Twenty minutes later after doing everything they could, they called it. Time of Death 6:15 am. Hysteria ensued.

The days began to blur together. Was it Monday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday? I didn't know nor did I care what today was. What I knew for sure was that my family was heartbroken and every day seemed to get worse. Funeral home visits, picking out clothes for him to wear, planning and answering questions, I hate questions but everyone seemed to ask them anyway. "What happened?" "What did he die from, if you don't mind me asking"? (Duh, of course, I minded.) The questions that bugged me the most were; "How are you, how are the kids"? (How the freak do you think we are?)

As if we weren't in a living hell already, now even in our misery, we have to deal with my deceased husband's selfish and entitled family. They've taken over planning the service to "help you" but the entire service is all about them. During the service, I saw more pictures of them in the slide show than my husband, my kids, or myself.

Each speech was a way to make themselves feel better about the crap they did when he was alive, or to somehow prove why they should be entitled to something that he'd left behind. (Primarily money) To make matters worse, unknowingly allowing his family to create the "FundMyGoodbye" donation page, meant that they were entitled to all monies raised. Even though there was money donated by my family and friends, my kids' friends, his friends, coworkers, etc... The creator of the account is the executor and gets to make the calls. Even the decision to keep whatever is leftover.

It's devastating when the same lousy people you warned your late husband about—those you gave the benefit of the doubt to, hoping things might be different given the circumstances—remain lousy. The final straw was them keeping the donations meant for our family and stealing a part of my husband's legacy.

Not only did his family take the remainder of the money that was raised, but one of my sisters-in-law stole a major client of my husband's business (a major contract that he'd held for over 6 years) under the guise that she was taking over my husband's business and would be handling the account from that point. Due to her lie, I was unable to mourn the death of my husband properly. I was forced to shut down my emotions and jump into Beast Mode.

The day after the funeral, I officially took over my husband's business and the remainder of his contracts. I went from a homemaker to a boss working ten hours a day 7 days a week. Luckily Sage and Eden were right by my side the whole time. We were determined to keep Kin's dream alive despite everything we'd lost.