The Night He Died

The night my husband died went like this.  It was November 14^th 2015. I had been expecting Jason home from Denver around ten p.m. that night. But he had called earlier saying that he had spent more time with his brother, Tyson, in Denver than he had planned and so he was barely leaving around 8. That would mean he would be getting home closer to 11. I was just glad he was coming home that night because there was a storm in the forecast for the next day, a Sunday. I washed dishes that night after the kids were in bed. Then I played the piano. Then around 9:45 Jason called me. I laid on the couch to talk to him. He told me that the Broadway musical he had seen with his brother, “The Lion King” was “awesome”. He had had a good time. He told me that Tyson would be coming back in a week to Utah for Brittney’s sister’s wedding. He told me he was tired and that he was fifteen minutes away from Chugwater. That meant he was on track to be home in another hour or so. I told him that if he got tired driving home he should not be afraid to pull over and take a nap or to call me so I could talk to him to keep him awake. We talked for just a few minutes and then the phone reception was lost. I determined this because when I tried to call him back as I was walking downstairs to go to bed it went straight to his voicemail. I figured he would call me back when he had reception again.

I woke up around 11:30 and thought it was weird he wasn’t home yet. When I called it rang and then went to his voicemail. I tried several times. I thought, “Maybe he decided to take my advice and pull over and take a nap,” although I knew it was unlikely because he didn’t like to do that. I decided to give him thirty more minutes before I’d start to worry. I woke up a few minutes later and looked at my phone. It was 12:50. Either my phone was wrong the first time or I had read it wrong because I know I hadn’t been sleeping over an hour. It had only been around 15 minutes or so. Since it was way past the time he should have been home I decided to call my friend, Camille Hanssen, whose husband was a highway patrolman to ask her what I should do. She finally answered the phone after about three tries. I told her that Jason hadn’t come home yet and asked her if her husband, Taylor was home. She said he was and he checked through his radio to see if anyone had spotted a blue Toyota Corolla. No one had seen anything. She assured me that everything would be all right and that there were lots of times that her husband came home from work a lot later than she had planned but everything was fine. She and Taylor put me at ease so I went back to bed. I decided that if he wasn’t home by 2 am I would call the police.

I woke up around 1:45 and knew something was wrong. I knew Jason would not have take a nap that long if he had decided to pull over. I thought maybe something had happened to our old car and maybe he was stranded. I called the police and told them my husband had not come home yet. I told them I had made contact with him when he was fifteen minutes out of Chugwater coming from Denver and so he should have been home right around 11 o’clock. They said they would keep an eye out for his car. I decided to wait one more hour before calling my mother and father-in-law. Around 3 a.m. I called the police again and asked them if they had seen anything. They hadn’t. I told them that I knew highway patrolmen didn’t patrol the interstate from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. (Camille had told me that before) and asked them if they had actually sent someone out to the highway to look for him. They said they had the first time I called. I then called Alma and Laurie. I called Laurie three times first because I did not have Alma’s phone number. I then looked up Country Cabins Inn online and found the number. He answered on the first try. I told him Jason hadn’t come home yet. I started to cry and told him I was scared something happened. But then I told him that maybe he just decided to pull over on the side of the road to sleep, but that I didn’t think he would have dozed off this long. We thought that maybe if he was stranded he would be pretty cold by now. He asked me what I wanted him to do. I told him I would start to look for him at daylight, around 6 a.m. If  he wanted, he could start driving over to Guernsey  then too.

I tried to relax and sleep on the couch. At 5 a.m. I decided to start getting ready. I got dry cereal in baggies and peanut butter and honey sandwiches for the kids to eat for breakfast in the car. I got dressed. I put blankets in the car in case I found Jason stranded and freezing. Then I got the three kids dressed. I wondered if I should put on the church clothes they had picked out that was hanging on their dresser. I felt that I had to be prepared for a long day and so I dressed them in jeans and tennis shoes instead. It was right around 6 a.m. when I had them all loaded in the van. I called Alma and told him I was on my way to look for Jason and he said they were going to start heading over here soon too. I told the kids to look on the side of the road for the blue car. I told them to look down in the ditches and that maybe they would see a car that didn’t look like ours but it still might be if it had been wrecked or was upside down or something.

My plan was to drive fifteen minutes past Chugwater since I knew he had gotten to that point, at least. I looked on the side of the opposite side of the highway as I drove for a stranded car. I drove about twenty minutes past Chugwater before I took an exit and started driving back towards Wheatland and Guernsey. I felt that if I found him, it would be south of Wheatland.  I drove slower on the way back because that was the direction Jason was driving in. I put my hazard lights on when I slowed down to look in ditches. I didn’t see anything.

I had been driving for about two hours by the time I arrived back in Wheatland. I pulled over at a gas station to fill up and to think about what to do. I had called my parents to tell them what was going on already. I called the bishop and asked him if he had heard from Jason. I was crying. He said he would help me look. I didn’t find out until later several men had been recruited by Bishop Paul May to help look for him.

I took the kids in to the gas station for a bathroom break and asked them if they wanted to keep looking with me, or go to the Hanssens house. They said they were tired of driving. I arrived at the Hanssen’s unexpected. When Taylor  opened the door I cried as I said, “I can’t find him.”

“He’s still not home?”

I shook my head no.

“You went looking for him?”

I told him yes and that I was going to go look again and take the exits this time to see if he pulled over at an exit and was stranded at one. We decided that he would come help me look. He told me to start heading back towards home to see if I would find him in that direction and he would look heading towards Chugwater again. I agreed, but felt in my heart that he was not in the direction I would be heading. I knew he was probably somewhere  between Wheatland and Chugwater. I needed to get gas. As I was pumping I called Taylor back and told him I was going to help him look in that direction because I did not think he had gone past Wheatland.

I started driving south again when I got a call from Camille saying that Taylor had told her that they had spotted a blue car north of Wheatland. I turned around and started heading north on I-25 again. (I later learned that this was just a decoy from Taylor because at this point he had been told what happened and was heading that way but did not want me to find them.) I was just approaching Wheatland again when I got another call from Camille. She said that they had found a blue Toyota Corolla. That they were pretty sure it was Jason’s car near Chugwater. She asked me if I wanted to go over to her house or if I wanted to be alone. She didn’t know he had died yet either, just that they found the car. I told her I would go to her house because I did not want to be alone if I was delivered bad news. At this point I was still hopeful Jason had just had a bad accident and was being taken to a hospital or something.

I got to her house. Before I went in I called the police again. I told the dispatcher that I had heard that my husband had possibly  been found south of Wheatland. I was wondering if she could give me more information. She said that she had to go because there was a fire and that she was going to have somebody call me back. I was nervous when I went into the house. I sat on the couch in her TV room and we talked about how horrible this pregnancy had been while the kids watched cartoons. At one point Camille went to the bathroom to talk to Taylor on the phone. I wondered what they were talking about. “It must have been bad,” I thought.  Then she got a knock on the door. It was Bishop May and the counselor in the  church Stake Presidency from Torrington. I thought they had come to get more information. I walked towards them and frustrated I said, “I don’t know anything. No one is telling me anything.” Then Bishop May told me to sit down. I finally knew what he was here for and I knew what he was going to say. I quickly reached for the armrest of the sofa in the sitting room and sat down.

He sat down and said, “Jason was in a car accident and was killed on impact.”

I remember looking at the designs on Camille’s rug over and over as I shook my head and said, “No. No. No. No.”

At first it was no like, “You are wrong”.

Then I could hear my toddler in myself as I repeated no in a high-pitch like, “I don’t want this”.

Finally it was no like, “This can’t be happening”.

I remember I stopped crying just as quickly as I started. Then I leaned back to rest my head. I was quiet for a while. With my head still leaned back I asked, “What happened?”

“He hit a deer. A very large buck and it went through the windshield.”

He said an officer would come over later to give me more details.

After a few moments I told him I needed to call Jason’s parents.

I dialed Alma’s number. They answered. I said, “He is gone.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, “He is dead” or “He died”. They didn’t understand me either because of bad reception or because I wasn’t talking very loud. Again through tears I said, “He is gone.”

“What? We can’t understand you.”

I put the phone on my lap and looked at the bishop imploringly and handed him the phone. He took it from me and said, “Is this Brother Harmon?”

“Yes.”

“This is Bishop May. Are you driving?”

“Yes we are.”

“I need you to pull over.”

“Okay.”

He delivered the news. I always wondered if they had him on speaker phone where you can hear through the speakers of the van. They told him they were just a few hours away.

I called my parents next. My mom had gotten out of the shower to answer. I said, “He is gone.” She said, “Que? No te entiendo nada estoy saliendo de la regadera.” “What? I can’t hear anything you said because I got out of the shower and it is still running.”

I cried in Spanish, “Se murio!” ("He died!")

“Ay! Ay! Mi amor. Calmada. Calmada. Ten te paso a tu papa.” ("Calm down. Calm down. Here, I will hand the phone over to your Dad") Her voice was shaky and she had never called me mi amor before.

When Dad answered he said, “Hello?” I told him was happened. His voice was shaky too as he said, “Oh, I’m so sorry Tal”. I asked them to come as soon as possible. He said OK.

When Taylor came I asked him to tell me what happened. He said the same thing as the Bishop and added the part about him veering off the highway onto a frontage road and stopping in a pile of rocks.  I asked him why they took so long to find him. I asked him if he was in a lot of pain. He said that there was no way to see him in the dark because of where the car finally landed. He said that it looked like he was killed pretty instantly and so there was no suffering.

The highway patrolman that had done the investigation came and said that the buck’s horns penetrated Jason’s head. He confirmed to me what Taylor had told me about not being able to find him sooner and reassured me that Jason hadn’t suffered for a moment. He said there were no swerve marks on the road to indicate that he had been alive for a while and had tried to gain control of the car after the impact. Instead there was evidence of a straight path from the highway to the rocks.

I need to insert this here. About a month before, Jason had driven the Corolla to Greybull for a school evaluation he was going to be a part of. He said that on his way back he hit something but did not know what it is. He said, “But it was big.” I wonder why this happened. I wonder if he saw the deer but - because he was going so fast - thought that hitting it would be safer than swerving and since he had done it once and been ok, it would be the same way this time.

I wonder who came to take Jason home? I wonder if he was scared when he realized he was outside of his body? I believe he was really worried about what would happen to us without him. I think that was probably one of his first concerns when he realized he had died. I believe he somewhat had a choice and knew that him being gone would be better for our family in the long run. I think once he knew this he was really happy to be dead. He was happy to see people he knew in this life that had passed on and happy to meet people he never knew. I believe it was a very special moment for him when he got to see his sister Amy who had died as an infant.

After the police officer left, I asked for my kids to be brought to me. They came and I gathered them together. I told them, “Listen to me. I need to tell you something. Daddy died. He was driving the car and he hit a deer and he died.” Isa started rocking back and forth like she does when she is nervous. Parley said, “For reals?” like he was in wonder.

I said, “Yes. For reals.  I am not pretending. We are never going to see him again.” I wanted to make it clear that this was not a game because sometimes we would play pretend with the kids and would “die” in the game. I realized how harsh this sounded though so I added, “In this life.” I knew they knew we would see each other again in heaven (we had taught them many times and I knew they understood) and my main worry was making sure they knew this was real. But the bishop and counselor were watching so I added that at the end. Talita didn’t really know what was going on. She didn’t really seem sad or shocked or anything, but she did repeat “Daddy died.”

For the next few hours while I waited for my in-laws to come I laid down.  First on the couch, then in Camryn’s (the Hanssen's daughter's) room. At times I sobbed, at times I wailed, at times I was just quiet. I was getting a lot of texts from the ward but wasn’t answering them. I needed Tylenol for a headache and decided to walk to my van to get some and a box of tissues. I remember needing to concentrate hard and walk slowly so as to not lose my balance.

Venessa called at one point to ask if the news she had heard was true. I told her it was but couldn’t tell her the details at the moment. She said that was OK and that she was going to try and find a way to be here.

When the Harmon’s arrived we hugged and cried. Then a police officer came to tell them in person what had happened. They asked questions. Then finally it was time to say goodbye to the Hanssens and go back to Guernsey. I had no appetite but knew I had to keep eating and drinking water because I was pregnant. I was worried about what all of this was doing to the baby. I forced myself to drink water and eat a few bites of the peanut butter sandwich I had packed. When we got home Alma and Laurie were busy making phone calls to let everyone know the details of what was going on, and people were calling them to express their condolences. I mostly sat on the couch.

A couple of people came over to my house that day: the school counselor and some youth from the Presbytarian church who had made cards.

The next few days I had a lot of visitors, a lot of meals, and a lot of thoughtful gifts and sympathy cards and sympathetic words.

            The funeral was more wonderful than I could have imagined. The words spoken were perfect and beautiful. There were hundreds of people there.