Things were wonderful. I married my high school sweetheart the moment we got out of college. You would think that we had a perfect life. We both had great careers making good money doing the things that we loved.
We had two beautiful kids who are smart and didn’t get into trouble. Along with all of that, we even had a house with a fair mortgage.
20 years into our marriage, my wife’s mother died. She was relatively young, only 60, but she was a big lady and she had a heart attack one day walking in a parking lot on a hot day.
My wife started drinking. At first, it was something she did to deal with the pain of losing her mother. Everyone drinks a bit more when they lose someone close, right? Well, after a few months, it seemed that she always had a bottle of wine or something open on the kitchen counter.
When I started to voice some concerns I had with how much she had been drinking, my wife became very defensive, but eventually promised to cut it back. Instead, she started hiding it from us.
One day, on the way to pick up my son at basketball practice, she lost control of her car. She was dead at the scene. The autopsy showed that she had a ridiculously high blood alcohol content, if the open bottle of vodka in her purse wasn’t enough of an indicator of how drunk she was.
It was hard to deal with the grief we all felt, and the aftermath of her passing. My brother and sister both helped me and the kids a ton in the following months. We found good counselors and now it is starting to seem like there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I am thankful, however, that she had not picked up my son when the accident occurred. I count that as a blessing.
Sometimes, terrible things happen and there isn’t much that can be done. You should always remember, however, that if you suffer an injury or, even worse, a loss, as the result of another person’s negligence, do not hesitate to contact a qualified attorney who can help through the hardest times.
