Healing from Loss

Love Lost ~ Love Found

Bruce and I were high school sweet hearts after 2 1/2 years of dating we married young. At the time of the auto collision in which Bruce was killed we had been married over 10 years and had a daughter who turned 10 a month before the collision, a boy age 2 and I was expecting our 3rd child, a daughter. Sara Jamaica (he named her before her birth) was born on what would have been our 11th anniversary. I believe she is my last gift from him. We had a wonderful marriage and were best friends and were always together in our social life. All those growing pain years had ended.

The night of the collision I could not go to the event my husband attended, because the next day we were having a wedding reception in our home. Bruce was to be the best man. We had just had our kitchen remodeled and everything from the kitchen was in the living room and needed to find it's place in the new cabinets we had custom made. There was also a PTO program at our daughter's school that night which I went to. He had been up very late finishing up with the kitchen plumbing and got up early to go to work for a full day.

He passed up our street going down the road a couple of miles to "dead man's curve". It was decided he fell asleep and had the cruise control set. At 2:00 AM the collision with an 18 wheeler happened. I knew he was dead two hours before the police arrived. I continued to pray for Bruce not to be dead. Over and over I told God I could handle and take care of a hurt man. I could take care of a wounded man. At 4:00 AM the police finally arrived with the news my husband was DOA at the local hospital. His death was instant and there was no coming back due to the injuries to his brain. I never saw his body, because the funeral home could not do anything to make his appearance better and I chose to remember the handsome man who said, Bye, I love you as he left our home. I did not have to do an ID his broken body due to the ambulance driver had gone to high school with Bruce and did ID his body. That was a thank you God blessing.

We had met Hank the man I later married before Bruce's death one time through a friend once a couple of months before the collision. After his death our friend Jackie would come to my home to be my handy man and would bring Hank with him sometimes. Bruce, Jackie and I had a very strong and loving relationship. Then he was also killed four months after Bruce. At the exact moment of his auto collision Hank came to my home for the very first time without Jackie looking for him. Hank went to Jackie's grandmother's and picked up the ringing phone from Parkland Hospital saying Jackie was DOA. Jackie had begged me to go, but the baby was only one month old and I just wasn't ready to get out yet. Jackie's death was a double whammy for me to loose another man I loved.
At the time I got to know Hank he was absolutely the most wounded being I had ever known. After multiple tours in Vietnam he was a mess without any doubts especially after loosing his friend Jackie. Hank had already had way too many losses in his life. We would see each other socially where two different sets of friends played music at local clubs. I felt lucky to have safe places to go and be surrounded by friends.
It was nice to go out and know maybe 30 or more people who gathered to see our friends play music. About nine months after the collision Hank and I began dating, since we were usually at the same places. He pretty much began asking me to marry him right then. I said no at least 11 times. I was so afraid to allow myself to love thinking he would die on me, too. Hank finally wore me down along with my parents who thought a widow with three children needed help raising her children. So on the 12th time he proposed I finally got past my fear of commitment, loving again and being afraid of loss.
Just recently he was telling Jamaica and her husband when I took a 6 month old baby, 3 years old son and a 10 year old daughter on a road trip with just the four of us for three weeks, he knew I was a strong woman. The kind of woman he wanted in his life. We left our home in Texas and drove westward stopping at KOA camps along the way. I had bought a cargo van and had it converted into a camping mobile. I got to pick out everything for the van and a good friend (groom above) did the paint job. The pack on top of the van was around two feet high with all our camping supplies and food for the journey. I have a picture of my three children on the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon. After the beaches of California we headed north to Yellow Stone then circled home by another route. I learned from that road trip it is easier to take care of three children at home than on the road, but I would do it all over again. It was exactly what my children and I needed to move on with our lives.


Hank and I married 11 months after I became a widow. He didn't die on me. Today he is not that wounded being God sent my way. We celebrate thirty-one years of marriage in October. We married two days in a row, but that is another story how two weddings came about. I do believe God had a plan and heard my prayers about taking care of a wounded man. Sixteen days after we married our fourth daughter was conceived. She is my blessing in disguise. I could not see past the pain and loss of Bruce at the time. Today having healed from the loss I can see all the challenges had to happen for Roxanne the baby of the family to be born.

I am so blessed by my family. There have been challenges along the way, but we have gotten through each one to see the Light on the other side. There is always hope. Moments of grief still occur sometimes. I remember on Hank and my 25th anniversary going out back to a pond and crying about what could have been, what should have been, but wasn't. It was strange how the grief hit me after all those years. The love we have for a person does not die with them. Forever they are alive not only in our memories, but in our hearts and minds.
Please know if you are going through a loss of a loved one time is the greatest healer of all. Take your life one day at a time and be grateful for what you shared during your time together.

Peace Love Stardove
My Lost Love ~ Bruce