Moving In The Right Direction

Shortly after the kitchen incident (Part 1) Cody moved out of our house and joined the Army!  As parents this was one of the proudest moments of our lives.

Cody Graduates Basic Training

Once Cody joined the Army he became a different person and we had hopes that he would continue with the military.  Unfortunately, he had other ideas and came home after graduation to continue on his military experience as a reserve soldier based out of Missoula, Montana.  For months after graduating he seemed to be turning his life around and even treated us like we very important to him.

Then we began to receive certified letters from the Army regarding Cody’s absences from his drill weekends.  Eventually the military discharged him from service due to these absences and it became apparent that he had fallen back into his old ways.  Over the course of the next few years he became homeless several times so we gave him a motor home to live in – he sold it and became homeless again.

After the motor home event we had intermittent contact with Cody, until eventually we lost contact all together.  Occasionally, he would show up at our house to say hi as he came to town to visit his friends from high school.

The Last Time We Spoke – Pre-accident

My husband and I were driving to a convention in Utah when Cody called.  My husband was driving so I answered his phone and apparently this was the wrong thing to do.  Cody’s words to me stung so bad that I still remember the conversation to this day – words that no mother should ever hear uttered from her child’s mouth.  Actually these were words that no human should speak to another human EVER!

Going into details on the verbiage is still too painful – suffice to say it involved bodily fluids on my grave among other things. To this day that conversation dumbfounds me as there was no provocation on my part primarily because we had not spoken to one another in months, if not years.

Ending the History Portion of The Story

As a reader of this blog you may be asking yourself – why disclose the history of the family in such detail.

The answer:

In order to understand the impact Cody’s accident had on us, you first must understand the relationship. In life a person can handle only so much before he or she starts closing off portions of their heart. Maybe I am cold, but until that fateful call I really didn’t feel anything for Cody, in essence I was numb and had no desire to open up any part of myself to him.  Every single time we communicated he used such language and had such disdain for me that I just simply couldn’t do it anymore.  Don’t get me wrong I was at fault too and am not trying to place the blame solely on Cody.

That however is not the story, just the beginning – the real story involves a spiritual journey, forgiveness, and love.

Life continued on until April 25, 2017.

Part 3 to follow……