The Day My Life Ended and Began

Yes, I have the title in the correct order. And as you keep reading, you’ll completely understand The Day My Life Ended and Began. I have been telling you all my having already been deep into my marriage with Michelle. But allow me to back up to the beginning of our journey together. Coming back from surgery, I returned to work after what seemed like months. While I had been away, Michelle was hired and was just beginning to get settled in her position.

To this day I will never be able to explain the feeling in my stomach the day I returned to work and first laid eyes on her. It is easy to claim this now. But I had this instant “this could be my life partner” kind of moment. I am pretty sure she knew how I felt about her within a couple of weeks…How you ask? Well, let’s just say that one day while trying to be Mr. Cool while flirting with her, I wasn’t watching where I was going and crashed my electric power chair right smack into the wall. And I believe she would tell you that she had the same type of moment. Needless to say, we hit it off immediately.

The next few months were everything that I had missed as a teenager. I really didn’t have the opportunity to date much in high school. Back in those days, kids like me were pretty much isolated to either one or two classrooms for their entire high school journey. This is a topic for another day.

But let’s just say education and technology were nothing like it is today. Anyway, as I was saying, everything in my life was good. A great job, a new relationship with Michelle. I even had my own apartment! No big deal, right? Well if you had been told most of your life that you might never have the opportunity to live on your own, much less the freedom to host your date on almost a nightly basis, you’d say that it was a big deal. Oh, and by the way, driving a 1965 Mustang was just icing on the cake!

I barely had enough money to get by every month. But that sure didn’t matter to me, as I was on top of the world. Just when everything in my little world was going as wonderful as they could possibly go……

It was approximately 1:20 p.m. on Saturday, February 28, 1998, that my whole world came crashing to the ground. Earlier that day, I had made my usual weekly visit to spend a few hours at my parent’s house. I would always talk sports, especially the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Longhorns with my dad and everything else with my mom.

My mother was my rock and my hero. She was just an amazing person and a true lover of life. Mom dedicated her whole life to helping others. And trust me when I say I would have never been half the man that I am today if not for her.

I could probably write an entire book on the things that mom did, either for me, or someone else! I left their house and returned back to my apartment to enjoy another Saturday afternoon of leftover pizza and beer. That’s about where my normal would change. The phone rang at that time at 1:20 p.m. and it was my aunt, my mother’s sister.

I will never forget the chilling words from her just as I said hello. “Shane, Dianna has shot and killed your mother.” My first thought was this was some kind of joke. And as bad as I wanted her to laugh and tell me she got me. I knew this was not a joke and she was in just as much a state of shock as I was. I will explain who this Dianna is in a future blog. Let’s just leave it for now that she was the person who robbed me and the rest of the world of the greatest woman I ever knew!

Within an hour after the greatest tragedy of my life, I had my family around me to lend love and support. Things are still such a blur that I can’t remember calling Michelle before or after family came. It really doesn’t matter though, as Michelle was at my side shortly after learning of this event. I am a firm believer that God places special people in your times of greatest need. This was exactly what had happened for me.

I don’t even want to know what I might have done or where I might be today, had God not placed Michelle in my life to help heal such wounds. Tomorrow marks the 18-year anniversary of mom being taken from us. It also marks the 18 years that Michelle and I have never even spent one single night away from each other.

Let me close this blog today by saying I love you, mom and I will always remember you sacrifices you made for me and everyone else you loved and cared about. Your memory will live on with all of us that loved you. And I know you rest easier knowing that I have Michelle and many others looking out for me. I love you!