Hope you all had a great Easter holiday with family. I took my children to my mom’s house where we had a nice meal, hunted for eggs and went swimming. It was in the mid-80’s so nice and warm, though the water was pretty cold and we ended up in the hot tub more than the pool.
Since we were near our old house, we went to investigate the renovations. The house was open and cleared out so we did a walk through. The entire upstairs had been gutted, leaving only the beams and outer walls. The fire had most obviously stayed in the attic area because almost all of the damage was in the roof.
Overall the damage to the house didn’t upset me but my daughter and oldest son were a little disturbed. Both of them remember the house from their childhood so it, of course, would be upsetting.
The Full Story
Both my step-father and later my husband would tell me the full story as given to them by the wife of the man who died. The night of his suicide the wife had opted to not sleep in the bed with her husband because of a long-time upset of him not sleeping in the bed with her. Instead he would work through the night in a type of mania. They had been trying to reconcile their relationship since Christmas and he had been doing well, going to counseling and meeting all her demands, but he had started slacking. So that evening when she took her stuff to sleep downstairs he asked her, “Are you sleeping downstairs.” She replied she was and told him, “You made your bed, now sleep in it.”
This set him off and he drank an entire bottle of wine while muttering and writing all over the walls and the bed sheets. He was blaming his wife for everything he had done and would do. He pulled all her clothes down from the closet and put them in a pile on the floor. She had just bought them and he thought she was trying to find a new man. He stood over them holding matches as he accused her of cheating on him.
She stayed downstairs most of the time and he would sometimes yell, “Is this really what you want?” And she would say, “Of course not. Come downstairs and lets talk about it.” But he refused and got more and more erratic. At one point he disconnected the internet so that she could not use it.
She took the pistol and hid it and later went up to check on him. He mentioned to her about the pistol and then pulled the shotgun out from under the bed. He knelt down on the floor with it, barrel up and looked at her, saying, “Is this what you want?” Then he discharged it into the ceiling. Fearing he intended a murder suicide, she got out of there as quickly as she could, grabbed the house phone and went outside. She called 911 as she hid in the bushes.
Outside she waited as the 911 operator talked to her. Through a window she saw her husband go downstairs with the shotgun in his hands. That was the last time she saw him. She did not hear it when he shot himself in the head but she did hear the fire alarms when the fire was set.
911 called out SWAT and they arrived first and one of them took her far from the house. Then the fire truck arrived but by then most of the upstairs had been destroyed by the fire.
Later, the men looking through the rubble found her husband’s phone under the pile of burned clothes he had lit on fire. She got the phone in working condition and then found over 4 hours of voice recordings from that night. She also found texts he had sent to family before he died telling them, “Listen to the recording”. There were older texts with a friend who had suggested she might be cheating on him.
She later found out that he had switched his life insurance plan from her being the sole beneficiary to her and four other family members. He did this while with family over the Christmas holiday. This might suggest that he intended to kill himself all the way back then and might have had a suicide plan ahead of time.
The night he killed himself he took the dogs downstairs (they had four) and then set fire to her clothes in the closet. He then positioned himself so that his body would fall into the fire after he shot himself. He created his own funeral pyre. The official cause of death was by gunshot, not fire.
Idea
The wife does not intend to live in the house again. She was advised to repair the damage and put the house on the market. I suggested to my husband that we buy it back. He is about to get a huge promotion allowing us to afford two mortgages if we chose. So I figure why not buy it back? So my husband spoke to the owner and she said she would consider selling it to us, we just don’t know if she will offer it to us before she puts it on the market or if she will make us wait and compete with other offers. If she chooses the latter and there is a bidding war, we likely won’t have a chance.
Based upon what my husband told me, she seems most interested in making a profit off the property. He says she was very bitter toward her husband and angry that he changed the life insurance and put her in the position of having to deal with a damaged house. So while I would love to return to our old home, the odds do not look to be in our favor unless we somehow end up getting enough cash to buy it outright (which is not impossible).
Other News
Almost a week ago now, my children found a baby dove wrapped in tissue in a planter along the sidewalk. We rescued him and have been feeding and caring for him ever since. He is thriving and getting bigger and stronger every day. He was just getting feathers when we found him. He now has full feathered wings and almost full feathers on the rest of his body. We call him “Birdy” and he lives in a cardboard box as his “nest”. Soon he will be trying to fly and be out of the nest, though. It is just a matter of time.
I kind of see this little bird as a message but it is hard to say exactly if he represents anything, really. It is just a feeling. I suspect that by the time we release him that it will be symbolic of a similar transformation being complete for me. I have often received messages of how I am like a baby bird who eventually must eventually learn to fly and leave the nest. Perhaps some phase is soon to come to an end? We’ll see, I guess.
Dove Symbolism and Meaning:
- Love
- Grace
- Promise
- Devotion
- Divinity
- Holiness
- Sacrifice
- Maternal
- Ascension
- Messenger
- Hopefulness
- Purification
Living Life in Between 