Trying to Deal With It

In those following weeks, I was just trying to get past my anger at W. He still wouldn't let me talk about my brother. His life or his death. When I tried to make sense of what I'd learned from the Funeral Director at he private viewing, W would get angry at me and tell me it was over and I should drop it.

When I couldn't talk to my husband, I turned to some friends. They all seemed to believe I'd heard wrong. They insisted if the death certificate said suicide, there couldn't be any question. I hadn't heard wrong. Left temple and no autopsy. I still didn't want to talk to my family about it, and gradually I kept my haunting questions to myself. But they never went away and they never left me in peace.

TK was in school. JT was off living in Toledo with his Father. I thought it was time to go back to work. That would help keep my mind busy. But when I mentioned it to W, he was against it. He wanted me to stay free to start work on the log home again as soon as the weather allowed. That reminded me of the law suit and that I hadn't heard anything from the lawyer. So I started calling him again. And got another shock. He'd never done anything and now we'd passed some time allowance. There wasnt' going to be any way we could get the miscut logs replaced. No apology from the lawyer. And when I checked, no other lawyer wanted to help us sue the first. They considered it our own fault for not checking closer. A lesson in not trusting. I was learning the hard way.

It was the last straw for me. I knew we were going to lose the property. But as soon as the weather allowed, we were back out there trying to finish with what we had. W thought we could get the wall high enough to add dormers and still get it under rood. A Gambrel roof would allow us to use less logs. So in early spring I found myself lifting logs up again. Now we were lifting them twice as often and twice as high. First to the scaffolding and again to the wall. And immediately I was in trouble again. But, this time I was blaming it on everything I'd gone through that winter. This time I was trying to ignore what was happening. I knew the Bank wasn't going to wait much longer. This was our last chance to save it. If we could get it under roof, we could camp out right there while we finished. That would allow us to sell the first house and make the bank happy. There was no bank morgage on our first home, so we would be ok.

So I pushed myself and ignored the pain in my head. I ignored the dizzy spells and the feeling that I was going to faint. I ignored it all, till that day in May when I lost consciousness.