July 31, 2007

This is the statement I sent to the city of Tyler, Texas. This is the statement that will be used in court when the ass that hit Joe finally has his trial....


On October 27, 2006 my husband left for work, just like any other day. I stayed home with our 4 year old and 22 month old children and anticipated the week ahead. I took the kids to the pumpkin patch so they could carve pumpkins with daddy the next day, and we had plans to attend our daughter's soccer awards program. The upcoming week would also involve the Halloween Fall Festival at church and all of us attending Disney on Ice. It was going to be a week full of activities we would do together as a family.
I talked to my husband several times while he was at work that day, making all the plans for the week. We also talked about the ultrasound we had the day before, revealing that our third child was due on June 4, 2007. I was eight weeks pregnant and we were thrilled.
This is just a snapshot of how are lives were. Our lives completely revolved around our family. We did everything together, and family was our main focus. A year earlier I had quit my teaching job to stay at home with the kids. And now that we were expecting our third child we were making plans to build a new house in a new school district. My husband had made all of this possible by working extremely hard at his business, which he had started only 15 months earlier.
In an instant all of this changed. At 7:45 pm, on October 27, I received a phone call telling me that my husband died in a car accident. I was told this as my two young children stood by my side. At that moment life as we knew it changed.
I will no longer be able to stay at home with my children, something that Joe and I felt to be very important in our children's live. I will now have to find a job and send my kids to daycare in order to support my children for the next twenty years. I realize that a lot of kids go to daycare and are just fine, but this was not our wish for our children. This was not our choice, this decision was forced upon me.
We will also not be moving into the house we dreamed of. Instead, I will stay where I am, in a three-bedroom house; or I will be forced to buy an even smaller, less expensive one.
We were a family that did everything together and now an integral part of our family is missing. My children are so young that they will probably not remember their dad for much longer. And the child that I'm carrying now will never even have the chance to meet him. They will never know what a great man their dad was, or how much he sacrificed for them.
They went from having a mom and dad who's life revolved around them, to being left alone with a mother who is depressed, alone, and can barely function well enough to take care of them. I can't even imagine how it will affect their lives. Everything Joe and I had envisioned for them is gone.
I am a thirty-two year old widow, and will be raising three children alone. It is a nightmare! It's been five months since Joe was killed, and I still haven't received any insurance money from Mr. McFadden. I am trying to support my family, pay off business debt, pay for legal fees, etc. all with the little amount I receive from social security.
My children and I are all in counseling. It gives us someone to talk to, but it doesn't make anything better. My four-year old daughter still lies in bed crying for her daddy every night. And my two-year old son still wanders through the house looking for him.
As for my own loss, I'm depressed, angry, confused, and lonely. But overall my main concern is for my children. I will never be able to make up for the tragic loss they've experienced. No matter what I do, life will never be the same for them. A negligent driver ripped their daddy from their lives, and I don't think any of us will ever fully recover.