The Night I Came Home and Found Her

It was August 14, 2014 — a Thursday. I remember the weather. I remember the time. I remember the feeling in my gut before I even knew why I had it.

We were living in a single-wide trailer in Depoe Bay, Oregon. It wasn’t much, but it was ours — the first real roof over our heads in months, after surviving a brutal winter in a tent with two little dogs and nothing but our pain for company. We had made it out of that, barely. But we were still fragile. Still worn down. Still quietly unraveling.

I came home that night around 8 p.m. It was just another day trying to keep things together. The sky was fading into that soft blue gray the coast gets in the evening. Everything seemed still. Too still.

The front door was locked.

That might not sound like much to someone else — but Olivia never locked the door when I was due home. Not unless something was wrong.

I stood there a second, holding the handle, staring at it, trying to make it make sense. My heart was already pounding. Something was off.

I went around to the bedroom window.

And I knew.

Before I even got close, before I looked through the glass… I knew.

She was inside. Unmoving. Unresponsive.

My stomach dropped and time slowed down — that weird, heavy stillness that only comes in the worst moments of your life. I froze for a second. Then I snapped into motion. I climbed through the window. I don’t even remember how.

I found her on the bed and she had no clothes on.

I tried CPR. I begged. I screamed. I prayed. I didn’t care what the neighbors heard. I didn’t care what it looked like. I just wanted her back.

But it was too late. She was gone.

And just like that… everything changed.

I had already watched Olivia walk through more pain than most people knew. She lost her mom to suicide back in 2005. That wound never healed — it just hardened her. She stayed strong for the kids. For me. For our dogs. But that grief never left her. It lingered. It deepened. It became something heavy and silent and constant.

We had survived so much together — blended five kids, my alcoholism, addiction, poverty, hopelessness. We were fighting the same demons, sometimes side by side, sometimes across the room from each other. She gave me her strength when I had none.

She wasn’t perfect. Neither was I. But she was mine. And she loved me through it all.

And then she was gone.

I don’t know how I made it through that night. The hours after. The questions. The sirens. The silence. I barely remember calling anyone. I barely remember breathing.

What I do remember is the stillness. Everything in my world stopped.

The pain wasn’t loud — it was quiet. The kind of quiet that settles in your bones and doesn’t leave.

Grief didn’t come with screaming or sobbing — it came with disbelief. With shaking hands. With staring at a wall for hours and not knowing if minutes had passed or days.

I kept thinking, How did we get here?

We were just trying to survive. That’s all we were ever trying to do.

And now I was alone. Thank God for my Mom and allowing me to come home.

This is the first time I’ve written this all out like this. Not just the facts — but the feeling. The truth of what it’s like to lose the person you thought would be by your side forever… to something you couldn’t fight for her.

I’ve carried guilt. I’ve carried questions. I’ve carried the weight of that locked door.

But I’m still here. Still writing. Still walking. And every time I speak her name, I try to make sure her story — and her pain — wasn’t for nothing.