Then that Friday evening, Linda's best friend called. Linda said she was in a panic, because she and her husband had a big blowout fight. Linda needed to go and console her, it shouldn't be a big deal, it was just for the evening. About an hour later, Linda called to tell me that her friend was already beyond caring for herself, and Linda would spend the night there. I heard laughing in the background, to which Linda responded that her friend was completely out of it and not making any sense.
I really can't tell you much of what happened after that, a lot of what you will hear is what has been reconstructed since.
I do know that I called some friends right away, and asked them if my kids could have a sleepover with theirs that night, because I was having a particularly hard night. I'm told I seemed reasonably together when I dropped Emma and Tommy off, but I did smell like I was already tying one on.
Phil and Jan, I can't thank you enough for what you did looking after my kids on the second lowest day of my life and the couple of months following. Know that I am forever grateful, and I expect you'd hear the same from Lindas parents.
We can only guess I was running away. I didn't really have anywhere to go. At 6 AM on that Saturday morning, I apparently somehow bluffed my way through renting a big SUV at the airport despite whatever I'd had to drink at that point in time. I must've returned to the house to fill it with almost all of my clothes, some of my other personal effects, and the bedding that Linda and I had slept on our last night together. I scrawled a note for Linda that she could pick up our safe, reliable family car at the airport.
They've looked at my phone's records, and it doesn't look like I had any sort of plan. My routes made no sense at all. I left town headed north, then I turned west. That might make sense if I were escaping to family, but then I spent the next three or so hours, driving confused circles all the way around the outside of town. The record of my travels looks like I was halfway through making the little swirls around a child's drawing of sunshine. I do know for certain the records show that at 11:15 I was crossing a state highway just off the interstate south west of town in an area with big semi-rural mansions. I must've been some kind of lost, because I had gone around in a circle twice, both times, crossing the state highway, and then backing back onto it to head north to get back on the interstate. The reconstruction team estimates that the car I hit was travelling well over 100 miles an hour on that little two-lane road. That means that the two of us could only possibly have been in that same physical space for an instant, yet we were, just barely. The skid marks show that I had only just clipped the rear end of the car, if I had been a moment slower, none of this would have happened.
They tell me the car slid out of control, then down the embankment and rolled several times. There wasn't much left of what had been a beautiful, classic, convertible Ferrari. I do remember knowing that this was bad, really bad, and dialling 911. When the police arrived sometime later, I was sitting in the roadway, the dregs of a bottle of bourbon in my hand, and there were empty cans of beer strewn inside and out of the rental truck.
I failed my sobriety test, of course."
There were some snickers at that, very very quietly.
"I was taken in and charged with DWI. I blew almost double the legal limit. Almost immediately afterwards I was told that they were adding two counts of vehicular homicide. I was beside myself.
My actions that day had cost two other people their lives. We soon learned that my actions also took their mother from my children. The next morning, police started to come to my cell with more questions, ones which didn't seem to make sense. It turns out Linda had not been at her friend's that morning, she was in that Ferrari, with the asshole football player who had destroyed our marriage in February. They were, according to the phone call she had made 30 minutes prior to the friend who was covering for her, rushing back to town to get to her friend's in time that I might believe she had been there. If only she had been there, maybe I would simply have crashed into a ditch and hurt no one but myself.
I knew then and there that I needed help. I started counselling, and meetings, as soon as they bailed me out. Nothing anyone can ever do will ever bring them back. Nothing I can say will ever change the horrible finality of my actions. I will have to live with this weight on my shoulders for all of eternity, and I understood that right away. I pled guilty as soon as I could, I wouldn't deny that I was responsible for the harm I had caused. I was sentenced to a year of prison and then probation.
Initially it was counselling and meetings in prison. After I was released, more and more meetings that helped me keep it together. It would've been so easy to just pop back over to the Willing Mind, grab another pint, and pretend that life could go on. But it couldn't. Nothing about that time could be undone, and life had changed. Many of you here have given me the strength to face that, and to face these last few years.
With each meeting, with each step, I became strengthened little by little to carry the burden that I have created. With each kind word of encouragement from Bob, and the rest of you, I was able to face another day, sober, face the death threats I received, the people who hated me for what I had done, or even those who didn't but might have been right to."
I was looking at Linda's father Rich as I said that. He had been civil at best, but he had never condemned me, nor lashed out, nor done anything that I was aware of to turn my children against me. At the other extreme, even in this room were people who would never forgive me for taking the hometown football hero from them in the prime of his career.
"Over the last four years, with the help of many of you here, I've gradually gotten my you-know-what together. Or at least all into one pile. I've managed to return to work, and keep a job. I've found some purpose there. Much more than that, i've learned that I am worth looking out for. It's ok for me to actively choose to work on my own interests. It's ok to prioritize my needs. It's not ok to bury those feelings, needs, and interests in anger, or sorrow, nor drown them in alcohol. And most importantly, I've learned that regardless of what has happened before, we can learn to forgive. Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting, or being freed from your obligation to make things right, it means letting go of all the anger that accompanies wrong actions to move forward in peace. Maybe if I had understood that before, none of you would have to be listening to me tonight."
I actually meant that.
