Tangled Web

I couldn’t put my finger on why I was upset. It was just another phone call to soothe my mother’s nerves. But, my father had answered. His tone was upbeat, and he shared that he was excited about buying a new bicycle. He is 74, and is in better shape and spirit than most people twenty years younger. He tells me he has signed up for a 10-mile bike trek and sightseeing adventure along the Gulf Coast. It’s just his voice—there is something pleading in it. He is trying.

Over a lifetime of calls with him, the effort has been lacking. The calls ranged from the normal quick calls back and forth when I lived at home, apprising him or my mother of my whereabouts, to violent, angry calls, filling me in on all of my flaws, lashing out at the latest disappointment he had been dealt in life, courtesy of me, his youngest daughter. There really was no in between, except perhaps, for the years that he wouldn’t come to the phone if I called, even if I pleaded. Sometimes he would answer, and knowing it was me, he would pick up the phone without a word and slam it on the nearest table our counter. He would call to my mother, saying “It’s her,” in a tone that let me know he couldn’t muster the energy to say my name.

This latest version of our calls is harder to understand. While we don’t talk about anything that happened over the years, there is something there in his voice, asking me to connect. Is this his version of an apology? My emotional response is one I recognize—guilt. I feel guilty for not giving more, for not just coming out and telling him I hear this in his voice, that it’s all ok. I am angry and confused that I somehow still feel guilty, that the repetition of the calls over the years has left me this way. No matter what our calls were about over the years, I ended up hanging up the phone and feeling awful. More often than not, I ended up sobbing. I don’t know how to react or feel any other way. After I talk to my father, my knee- jerk reaction is to examine what I am doing wrong, what is wrong with me. 

That has never been a challenge.

The voice I hear in my head is his. Second-guessing every single decision I make in life, constantly putting myself down, thinking the worst. I have to battle to hear the faint whisper of my own voice, trying in vain to protect me. Years of therapy finally helped me adjust the volume so that on my best days, I hear my own voice clearly. But try as I might, I can’t mute his completely. It will always be an echo, or a drumbeat, and at times it still thunders so loud that it takes all of my energy to drown it out.

To keep myself from becoming lost yet again in guilt and worry, I make myself remember everything over the years that has gotten me to this point. I cannot connect any deeper with him because of all of those things--very real things--that my mother and father both choose to place in their world of denial. Drudging all of that up is necessary, but it takes its own toll. Being raised in a family that chooses to not only deny the truth, but bury and forget it altogether, can make you feel the need to return again and again to your memories, to ensure that you, too, don’t get lost and buried.

There’s a nagging tug in hearing his voice age and my mother’s become more frail. I watch as friends lose their parents and I debate in my head if I am doing what I should. I stare down a rabbit hole that I have fallen into many times, too deeply—worrying more about my mother’s or father’s happiness than my own. I stare long and hard, and make myself back away. It is not a simple decision, it is a battle. I think it will always be.

Even though it is hard, I have kept communication with them. Most of this I have done for my mother, who needs the connection with me. I love her, and I know that nothing that has happened was intentional on either of their parts. My mother did not set out to marry an alcoholic, unfaithful man. My father did not set out to be a bad husband or father. But they both made choices that impacted my life and theirs. Those choices paved the way for a very painful life for me, and incredibly poor self-esteem. Each time I go through these feelings of guilt, I have to connect to a particular memory to remind me why I have to keep my distance and take care of myself.

The one this week that helped was fairly recent, back in 2009, when I was living in Charlotte and working for a women’s magazine. I had just gotten back on my feet after a really horrible time with deep depression, that had me still shaky at times. My mother and father were driving through town, back to their home in Florida. Charlotte was merely going to be a pit stop, to see me. My father’s birthday was coming up, so I had put together a gift for him, trying hard to do something nice. It took me hours just to pick the wrapping paper. We were to meet for breakfast, near my office, so I could go into work right after.

I got there early, not wanting to disappoint anyone. Soon after I arrived, my father called my cell phone, obviously angry, demanding directions. His anger, as always, panicked me, and I scrambled to think of street names and exits off the interstate. He wasn’t clearly explaining where he was, and was cursing –every other word was “fuck” or “shit”. I was sitting at a table in an Einstein’s Bagel’s restaurant, breathing heavily, trying to calm my father down, and figure out where he was and how to get him to my location. After ten minutes of back and forth, he angrily growled that I “didn’t know fucking anything, and had ruined every fucking thing…just like always”. The line went dead. I hadn’t looked up from my table during the call, and realized that people were staring. I was still breathing hard, and somehow didn’t realize I was crying. A woman next to me reached over from her table and put her hand on my arm. As is my usual response, I apologized. She looked me square in the eyes and said, “Please stop. Stop apologizing.” I just shook my head, for a minute back to being five years old and in my father’s shadow. “I could hear every word he was saying,” she continued, “stop. You aren’t the one in the wrong.”

I managed to thank her and then got into my car and fell to pieces. Somehow, I was able to walk into my office 30 minutes later and no one was the wiser. I have had a lifetime of experience in covering my emotions.

This, in comparison to many other incidents with my father, was minor. This was nothing but words. I remember telling myself that on that morning, over and over. Nothing but words, nothing but words. But words have meaning. I believed he meant it when he said I ruined every fucking thing—always. Hearing things like that your whole life makes an impact. I still have to remind myself—daily—that I am not someone who ruins things. I am someone of worth.

It took me 38 years to begin to speak out loud and really begin to tackle my depression and the reality behind it. I slipped during the process and barely regained my footing. More than anything during all of the therapy, the tears, the hard conversations, and reliving things too painful to endure once--much less countless times in my therapists office--the thing I gained that is most valuable is the realization that I had to save myself. Actions I was taking, that I thought were the choices that made me a good person--a good daughter, were actually weighing me down more and more, and eventually pulling me under. The people around me, who were supposed to love me unconditionally, who I should have been able to rely on no matter what, were actually helping me drown.

I almost did drown. It was a very close call.

There are moments today when I feel the weight, I feel the water rushing over me. After a lifetime of fighting this, of battling constantly to feel better about myself, to hear and trust MY voice, I sometimes feel exhausted. I want to just settle in and let it all go. Just let the water take me.

Then I remember how far I have come, and that once I saved myself not too many years ago, I came out of the water, gasping and barely alive, but I made it. I survived. It was a long, hard fight, but I did it. So many beautiful things came after—that wouldn’t have unless I had freed myself to allow them.

Unfortunately, guilt still lingers and my heart still questions things. I have to go through this process—even after a simple 5 minute phone call-- to remind myself what it takes to be free, and how much I can invest before it’s too much. It’s still a hard long process, but it is worth it.

I am worth it.

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Finally Found You, Part 2

From the moment her information appeared in front of me, glowing on my computer screen, I knew that I would call her. I knew I would hear her voice, and learn things, whether she answered my questions or not. My mother’s best friend and my aunt were both shocked that I was prepared to be so brazen; concerned about who this woman was, and what I would learn. There was no choice for me. I had to contact her.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. My hands shook and I paced in my tiny apartment for almost a half hour before I got to courage to sit on my bed, pull the phone from my nightstand, and dial the numbers. My heart was pounding. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had to know something.

Someone once told me that it’s the unknown things that tear you apart. You can deal with what you know- good, bad, horrible- you can find a way to make it through. The unknown leaves you no path, no light at the end of the tunnel. That made sense. The need to know. The need to fill in the missing pieces of my father’s life, the mysteries of his anger and dependence on alcohol. Dialing those numbers felt like I was turning the dial on a safe, getting ready to pull open a heavy door that would help me understand.

What I didn’t know was that I was opening a door to 30 some-odd years of existing on secrets, lies, and facades. I didn’t know that opening the door to the truth could shatter my foundation instead of strengthening it. I had no idea.

I was ready for her to answer the phone. His mistress. One of many, I suspected, but the only one I knew of for sure. The only one that was real to me. The phone rang three times and the voice on the other end was not at all what I was suspecting. A small child sang the word hello to me, dragging out the multiple syllables while rustling the receiver. I froze. I asked if his mommy was named her name. He answered yes, and told me she was in the next room. Should he get her? Yes, I answered, listening to his clomping footsteps carry the phone to her. In that moment, I was counting the years back to Atlanta and the years in between, trying to see if the age was right. Trying to reconcile the fact that I might have been speaking to a half brother. Still digesting that, I heard her voice.

“Hello?”

Very southern. The unmistakable drawl of well-bred, old money Atlanta. Now in Florida.

“This is (I said his name)’s daughter.”

Her response was all I needed. It told me everything.

In a panicked voice she asked, “Is he alright?!? Is he OK??”

Not the response I expected. But what had I wanted, really?

Did I want her to say Who? Whose daughter? Who is this? Who is he?

Did I want to then wonder if she was just a good liar? Or did I really not want it all to be true? In theory, that would be great, but then, what would that mean to everything I thought I knew? All the hunches, suspicions… and all the fallout of living with a father who had chosen someone else and something else instead of being with his family. Really with his family.

No one asks if someone is alright like that unless they care, unless they are involved.

I assured her he was just fine. So was his wife.

She was momentarily stunned, which didn’t seem to be a far distance for her to travel. Not speaking out of ill will, just the facts, she was not the sharpest tool in the shed. I remember picturing a younger Rose Nyland from the Golden Girls in my head as I talked to her. Only maybe not so innocent. Or maybe she was.

I clarified a few things for her. He had another daughter (she only knew about me). He was not single, he was still married. He was not the age she thought he was, he was about 10 years older than that. That seemed to be the thing that concerned her most of all, but none of it seemed to really be getting through. It just seemed like new information, nothing damning to her, nothing that really changed anything.

The damning things came from her direction.

How he spoiled her. How he drove to her house to pick her up and wouldn’t ever let her walk to the car, he had to carry her. How gentlemanly he was, opening doors for her, taking her places. I had to lay down. I was nauseous. This man she was describing, at great length, was a man I had never met. And my mother for damn sure had never met him. Never once, ever in my life would I describe any of his actions toward my mother as spoiling her. This was a man for whom I had to buy my mother’s birthday and Christmas gifts, handing the greeting cards to him for his signature. This was a man that never, ever, thought of my mother first, or celebrated anniversaries or special occasions unless friends prompted and arranged everything. I was seething and sick at the same time. She continued to blather on, Rose-Nylund style, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was giving details to the daughter of a married man she was sleeping with, details she shouldn't be sharing. Details that were turning my insides and breaking my heart.

“STOP!” I said, louder than I meant to.

She did. Sensing I was now upset, she began backpedaling, saying it was over now, and had been for some time. I told her I found that a little hard to believe since my father was now moving to Florida, her state of residence. She stumbled and made explanations, assured me I was wrong.  When I asked when it had ended, she couldn’t answer, laughing nervously and changing the subject. She wasn’t quick enough to answer my accusations. She didn’t need to be.

I ended the call, hung up the receiver and stumbled to the bathroom to throw up.

My mother’s face kept flashing before me. I should have told her years ago, back in Atlanta. It had gone on forever. I never imagined he was having relationships with these women, real relationships. I didn’t know he was capable of it. Only, he was. Just not with his wife. Not with his family.

Not with us. Not with me.

My mother’s best friend reassured me about my decision not to tell my mom years ago. She knew why I had made the decision back in Atlanta. Even though others didn’t know for sure about my father’s infidelities, there had been suspicions. My mother was always so fragile and innocent, so dependent on my father. I had tried in the past to ask her about their relationship, even broached the subject of him cheating. She would not discuss it. Not in an angry way, she just changed the subject and slipped into the comfort of denial. It was maddening. No matter how you pushed, she blankly stared back, refusing to acknowledge any words she didn’t want to hear.

I had a new decision to make now.

It was one thing to live in denial, to make choices based on turning a blind eye, but it was another to be pulled from everyone and everything you know and be taken somewhere strange and new for someone else’s selfish reasons. I imagined her withering away, being abandoned even worse than before. I had to tell her. I had to make her listen to these words, to what was happening. Jolting my mother into reality wasn’t going to be easy. Or without pain.

I took a few personal days from work and made the seven hour drive home, practicing my speech along the way. My father was going to be out of town working, and she and I would be alone. No plans, just a visit, I told her. She was thrilled that I was coming to see her, to spend time with her. She always was. It broke my heart.

I was struggling with everything, but at the same time, I felt so strong. I thought that maybe, for that for the first time in my life, I might be able to change the family dynamic- extract some of of the dysfunction somehow.

I imagined my mom on her own, finding strength she never knew she had, surrounded by friends who would support her and love her and help her build a life she could count on. I saw her living in the present instead of in denial…nothing to hide or be ashamed of, no secrets or betrayals.

But, I knew her, I knew how emotionally frail she was. I knew how devastating it would be to hear this from her daughter. I knew how private she was and how this would feel so invasive.

Usually, the seven hour drive home seemed endless. This time, it was too short. I was pulling into the driveway before I knew it. Sitting in my car, hesitating to go inside.

How do you begin the conversation that will change your mother’s life?


For Part 1 in this series of posts, click here.

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Chasing Memories

A few months will go by and I will realize that the images haven’t invaded my mind—a sort of remission. It’s a relief and then a reminder. Some sensory thing will bring it back to me, a misstep on concrete, looking over a railing in a shopping mall and feeling the familiar stomach drop, or brushing against peeling paint on a window sill. Then, I am there.

It was summer, I was 7 or 8. Annoyingly, the specifics of some parts of that day are lost to me…my exact age, the city we were in, the name of the hotel. I want to know, I want to physically go back there for some reason. But I can’t. The rest of the details, for a span of probably 10 minutes or so, are terribly clear. Vivid. I wake to those details many nights, sweating and with my heart pounding visibly through my nightgown. There have been several nights when I have had to get up and change the sheets after waking to find I have been sweating terribly for most of the night. I wake to a damp, hot and cold cocoon, and peel myself out of it. The last two nights have been that way.

It is ten minutes of my life. But it won’t leave me.

My mother, father and I were on a vacation somewhere. I am fairly sure we were at a beach (maybe Florida?). I think we were there for a short time, maybe traveling with my father while he worked somewhere. I remember wearing a yellow bathing suit, and that our room was small, but opened to a balcony. Our view looked straight across a courtyard to rows and levels of rooms and balconies just like ours, a mirror reflection of middle-income weekend-getaway style. Many floors below (maybe 8, maybe 10?) and to the left, a turquoise swimming pool shimmered and made reflections on the ceiling of our balcony- little glimmers of light thrown from far below, beckoning me to the water.

The TV was on, I was bored, nothing was out of the ordinary. I heard the familiar clunking sound of the cooler being opened, and then my father immersing his hand into the icy water and melted ice, finding one of the colder cans of beer in the bottom. My whole life, anytime we have stayed in a hotel, and long before mini-fridges were the norm in each room, my father’s first order of business was to fill the large orange Igloo cooler with ice at the automatic machine to chill the innumerable beers he had just purchased somewhere nearby.

So, today was no different than any other time, any other trip. My memories of my father almost always include a beer in his hand, for years and years, a Pabst Blue Ribbon can. That image, that red white and blue logo and lettering, is part of my childhood. What is odd is that he hid the effects so well. My estimation is that he was almost constantly buzzed or drunk—all the time. But, he wasn’t a stumbling, jobless, word-slurring drunk. He had somehow managed to conquer the tell-tale signs for the public. At home we saw longer stretches of inebriation and violent outbursts, but to be honest, over my whole life living in the house with him and my mother, and for the many years I tried to go home for holidays and have a normal life, more often than not, he seemed fine. If someone dropped in to visit, nothing seemed amiss. The flipside of that, though, was that we could all be sitting around the dinner table and something…nothing… would cause a reaction from him so unexpected, so shocking, that the rest of the evening blurred afterwards for me.

So this day, in this hotel, was just that way. There were no loud voices, no provocations, just all of the sudden the air in the room was different. He was different.

I was sitting on the bed in my bathing suit, watching TV, and in what seemed like a split second, my father had picked me up off the bed by my wrists, and spun me around. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t upset, he was actually laughing.

What might have been normal father-daughter interactions were always laced with trepidation for me. Today, in particular, I noticed his grip on me was weak, faltering. It turned a light hearted moment into one of me assessing how close he was spinning me to the glass door and the corner of the nightstand.

He then carried me out onto the balcony and before I could think or protest, flung me over the railing of the balcony, dangling me, eight or so stories up. He was laughing and joking with me. At first, I struggled, but then became paralyzed with fear, especially as he seemed oblivious to the danger of the situation.

He pulled me up over the edge, back onto the balcony, and looked puzzled at the expression on my face, and my tears. He began teasing me for crying. He was still laughing, and looked absolutely shocked at my reaction. My mother was standing near the open door of the patio, but said nothing. She had a distant, faraway look.  She never said anything. To me or to him.

As if to prove it was all in fun, my father scooped me up again and again, repeating the same steps, holding me over the railing longer and longer. I scraped the back of my heels against the peeling, painted concrete, trying to somehow climb backwards onto the safety of the balcony. I looked down and tried to will the pool to move underneath where I was hanging, instead of the patches of grass and sidewalk that were directly below me. I felt his grip slipping a few times, and I was terrified he was going to drop me, let me slip away.

Each time I was finally back safe in the room, I was a wreck, and crying loudly for my mother to make him stop—pleading with him-- telling him he was scaring me. In his drunken haze, he was just more confused. In my mother’s life-saving veil of denial, she couldn’t be in that room. She was there, but not there. It wasn’t happening.

Those last two sentences did not come easily to me. Over the years, I remembered that episode in my life with so much bitterness. I remembered a drunken, uncaring man who saw his little girl terrified and wanted to keep scaring her. I saw a mother in that room who didn’t care and did nothing. Those statements are both true and untrue. There is reality and then there is the whole picture.

As it is with all occurrences like this from my past, I have no one I can go to and say—“do you remember this? Can you tell me more about that day?” These things simply didn’t happen in the world my parents live in. My father, in truth, can’t remember a lot of things in his alcohol-soaked past. My mother may remember somewhere in her lost soul, but she can’t let herself.

All of this realization came after years of therapy, and in particular, one night in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Washington DC. It has been over a decade now since I sat in the floor of the self-help aisle in that bookstore and pulled book after book off the shelf about living with an alcoholic parent. At that point, I wanted to understand my father more, I was trying to solve the mystery of it all. I had just started admitting the reality of my life to myself. I wanted to know how my father came to be this person, and what kind of person it was making me.

What I found instead was words on a page that described my mother in such intricate and perfect detail that I was frozen in that spot. Her denial, her absolute inability to look back and help me piece things together. Over the years, I had tried desperately to shake answers from her, questioning her, reminding her of dates, holidays, what I was wearing on a particular night—trying to jog her memory to give me the answers to all the whys I had for so many incidents. She would reply with a blank stare, a confused expression, and finally exasperation that I was “misremembering” or worse, making up things.

It had haunted me. Was I crazy?

Did I imagine these nights, these outbursts?

No, I hadn’t. And as I read the words through my tears that night at Barnes & Noble, I knew that what I was reading was true. No one could write about what I was living with such accuracy unless it was happening to others, unless it was real, unless one thing led to another. My father was an alcoholic, my mother was a typical spouse of an alcoholic. I was also on my way to becoming a statistic. Depression was ruling my life at that point, I had broken down more than a few times. I had been in therapy, but I hadn’t been honest. Secrets were a way of life in our house, and they were kept with an unspoken promise. I hadn’t told anyone the truth of my life, the truth of it all. The main reason I hadn’t was that I felt I was somehow the reason for it all. I had always felt that way. I felt if I had been a better child, a better daughter, my father wouldn’t be the way he was, and my mother wouldn’t be the way she was. If only I had been better, our lives would have been different.

That night in the bookstore was a turning point for me. Many more years of therapy, truth telling, and realizations lay ahead of me. If I had known how many, I might not have kept going. It was a long road from there to here, just to understand days like the one in that hotel. And I do understand it, I do. But it still haunts me.

Tonight it hit me that I have so much uncertainty in my life right now, and I feel so out of control. Maybe the reason this dream has visited me the last few nights is that feeling of being out of control was so present in that moment. Maybe it is one of the first times I remember feeling that way. Maybe the two are connected.

Maybe not.

In my dream, all the details of that day are the same except the end. In my dream, he loses his grip, and I am falling and falling…it seems like forever. And just before I hit the ground, I wake up, gasping for air.

A part of me wishes I could remember where it all happened so I could go to that hotel, find that exact room, and step out on that balcony. I want to look over the railing and sigh with relief that it was only a floor or two up, not a long drop at all. I want to realize that he hadn’t put me in as much danger as I thought, that I was just being a child, being scared, seeing things as worse than they were in my mind. He didn’t nearly let me slip away. I always wonder if that would put this memory to rest once and for all.

But like so many things in my past, so many similar memories, I won’t get that type of closure. I would likely get something worse- that it was all just as I remember it, just as scary, just as bad.

I would just be chasing memories, going in circles, getting nowhere. There is nothing deeper in that ten minutes than what I know it to be. I believe I am at peace with that, but for whatever reason, that day still has a hold on me.

And I will be here, waiting, until it lets me go.

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There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane

On July 26, 2009, Diane Schuler was driving a minivan with her two children and three nieces inside. They had just left Hunter Lake Campground in upstate New York to head back home to Long Island.

They never made it home, and what happened on that trip is a horrible mystery that ended in the deaths of eight people.

Diane drove on the Taconic Parkway in the wrong direction for almost two miles before crashing head on into an oncoming SUV, killing herself, her daughter, all three of her nieces, and the three men in the SUV. Her five year old son was the lone survivor.

Several calls were made from inside that minivan before the crash. One was from one of Diane’s nieces who called her father (Diane’s brother) frantically telling him, “There’s something wrong with Aunt Diane”. Everyone in the family was panicked, trying to reach Diane, trying to get authorities to locate the car. Diane had previously called her brother and his wife, once that morning when things were fine, chatting about day to day things. Only twenty minutes after that last “normal” call, everything changed.

Calls after that from Diane were nearly incoherent, with Diane sounding disheveled—not making sense. It seemed as if she was having some sort of medical episode.

After the crash, an autopsy was done on Diane Schuler. It was revealed that her blood alcohol level was almost twice the legal limit (equaling about ten drinks), and large amounts of marijuana were found in her system. Family and friends were shocked. By all accounts, Diane Schuler was a responsible, intelligent woman; an excellent mother, and a beloved aunt, wife, and sister. Her nieces adored her. She had a job making $100,000 a year, and was well regarded and respected by her coworkers.

The pieces just didn’t fit. How could this have happened, and what really happened?

I learned about Diane Schuler’s story by watching the HBO Documentary, “There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane”. I actually ended up watching it several times, and making my husband watch with me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. This was a tragedy on so many levels.

Diane’s husband Danny was featured in the documentary, and he and his sister-in-law Jay were the most prominent faces in the film. It has become Jay and Danny’s mission to clear Diane’s name and to try and find out more about what happened that terrible day. Both believe something medical happened, as the Diane they knew was not an alcoholic or a heavy drinker. They both admit that she occasionally smoked marijuana. But Jay denies that Diane would have ever done anything to intentionally hurt the children- her own and her brothers-that she loved so much.

In the documentary, a full portrait is painted of Diane. At the age of nine, her mother left her family, and Diane became the “mom” in a house full of brothers. Maybe because of this early trauma, Diane became a typical “Type A” personality, needing to be in control, to have things planned and in place. Almost everyone interviewed that knew about Diane mentioned her needing to be in control and being incredibly organized—almost obsessively so. But she wasn’t neurotic or distant, she created a warm, wonderful world in all her plans and organization, and was deeply loved by her husband, children, brother, sister-in-laws and her nieces—who were especially dear to her.

The events of July 26, 2009 and every moment of Diane’s life leading up to that day are a complete contradiction. This is obviously a passionate issue for those who lived in the area and remember the crash, and even for people like me that are just learning about this via the documentary. People immediately demonized Diane as a “drunk” and a “monster”. The documentary shows comments people made on websites, underneath news stories about the tragedy. Diane is called horrible things, damned by those who maybe only know the sound bytes or headlines surrounding the case.

No one will ever know what happened. You cannot deny the alcohol and marijuana in her system- the autopsy was repeated and DNA tested twice. But, the story is not that simple. If Diane had a history of erratic behavior, drinking heavily, or irresponsible activities, perhaps there would be more blame to place. It makes me so sad that someone’s life is reduced to a moment that we will never know the full truth behind.

I cannot imagine the pain that Warren and Jackie Hance (Diane’s brother and sister-in-law) have endured—in one moment, they lost all of their children, three beautiful girls. It pains me, and I have thought of them every day since first seeing this documentary.

But Diane Schuler was not a monster. I believe something happened that morning, and she made poor choices, perhaps not in her right mind. It is maddening to watch the videos of her less than an hour before the crash, stopping at a gas station, looking normal, and in no way drunk or even confused. She stopped at a McDonalds that morning to get all the kids breakfast, and the staff there remembered her, and were certain she wasn’t drunk or acting unusual or erratic. And she was completely normal at 11:37am when talking to Jackie Hance on the phone, and did not give Jackie any signs of alarm. Only 20 minutes later, that all changed.

In the documentary, Danny Schuler, (Diane’s husband) doesn’t do himself any favors. He comes across as defensive and distant, angry and defiant. As he and Jay search to try and clear Diane’s name, their inability to do so only causes his frustration level and defensiveness to rise. But, as people in his community and across the country demonize his wife, and attack his family, I wonder how this has contributed to who he is now. His choices recently (and after the documentary was made) don’t help matters, and I can honestly say I have been disgusted with his latest choices- which include suing Warren and Jackie Hance, as Diane was driving their minivan that day- the day they lost all three of their daughters.

I felt so badly for Jay Schuler—Diane’s sister-in-law, who was trying desperately to clear the name of a beloved family member that she truly did not believe could have made the choices that led to the accident. Jay was certain that there was going to be some medical explanation, but there wasn’t. I believe Jay’s only motivation was to clear Diane’s name for the family, and for her surviving son Brian. Watching Jay read the horrible things people said about her late sister-in-law was heartbreaking.

Whatever happened that day, I do not believe there is any evidence that Diane did anything intentional to hurt the precious children in her car, or the three men in the other vehicle. A terrible, horrible, unthinkable thing happened, but this should not the only legacy for a woman who led an otherwise normal, beautiful life.

I have been guilty of reading articles over the years and making snap judgments. It’s easy to become enraged over the acts and coincidences that happen, no matter how unintentional, that take the lives of others, especially when there are children involved.

Watching this documentary, I want so badly to turn back time. I want to stop the tape and rewind it, get those kids out of that car—get Diane out of that car—stop it all from happening. I cannot imagine what the close family members go through, what they wish for, how they are haunted. And not knowing the truth, not having that closure, has to be maddening.

Somehow, Diane made poor choices that morning, horrific choices that led to a disaster. Perhaps she had a hidden drug or alcohol problem. Perhaps her husband even knew more than he is saying. But, it doesn’t matter. It truly doesn’t. The blame is hers- she was responsible for what happened that day. But we are all so much more than our worst moments, our worst choices. Diane Schuler is gone, and the answers went with her. Eight lives were lost. Nothing can bring them back. But in the days leading up to that accident, in all the days, months and years she was someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone's aunt, someone’s sibling, someone’s child, someone’s best friend…she was loved, respected, and today she is missed. She was more than one day, more than a bad choice or choices. 

And I for one hope she rests in peace.

Follow this link for more information about the HBO Documentary

Please read this beautiful article by Jackie Hance written with so much grace and strength.

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