Friday, April 3, 2009 started out as a normal day. I worked as a volunteer coordinator at a Southern hospice chain and my team had a large bingo event at a local retirement center during lunch. We spent the morning prepping door prizes. I bought lots of party food. Most of my day was spent trying to make an afternoon enjoyable for people who didn’t have much longer on this earth.
There were multiple sleepovers at my house, planned by my three oldest kids, on that particular Friday night. The boys were going to video game themselves into a coma and the girls’ friends were going to try and stir my girls up, displaying as much teen angst as they thought they could get away with. As I was leaving work for home, I started getting phone calls asking for food things we didn’t already have. I rushed to make a grocery run.
I was unloading groceries when “Stu,” a colleague from another local church, stopped by our house. I tried to invite him inside but he refused. Stu asked me to deliver my husband, who was working in our home office, to him outside. It was very odd for someone from the South, living in the South, not to come inside when invited. Southerners aren’t typically rude when they show up at your front door.
My husband went outside and because something clearly was wrong, I ran to the garage to eavesdrop. I listened while Stu demeaned, emasculated, and fired my husband from his job (which is a long story for another time). When my husband walked back inside the door, his eyes looked hollow and his face was white. He went back in the office and shut the door. My gut told me to send my youngest daughter across the street to play with her friend. The teenagers upstairs were laughing furiously.
I checked in on the boys who were oblivious to anything except the screen in front of their faces. I was relieved none of them were aware how unsettling the day had turned. About a half an hour later, my husband walked out of our bedroom heading for the front door, stopping to say, “I’m going for a drive to clear my head.” Our eyes locked for a split second. The words, “Are you coming back?” flooded out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. He nodded his head and the door closed behind Him.
Instinct told me to follow. Keys in hand, I yelled to my girls they needed to watch the boys while I ran an errand. I called my neighbor to make sure my youngest daughter was in fact at her house. I couldn’t have been more than 30 seconds behind him leaving our subdivision.
I drove around for 20 minutes trying to locate him.
He vanished.
I gave up.
I drove home.