Wendy shares about a painful time in her life; the time her mother ended her own life. Wendy was only twelve and the oldest of five children.
It was an early morning on April 16, 1975, when Wally found his beloved 31 year-old wife, Linda, dead in a pool of her own blood. He screamed, then closed and locked the bathroom door behind him, trying to hide the scene from their young five children. Frantically pacing the floor, Wally asked his daughter, Wendy, to watch the kids and not to let anyone, under any conditions, open the bathroom door. While in his pajamas, Wally ran quickly to his Bishops house down the street to get help.
Shortly, after Wally and his Bishop returned, Marjean, the Bishop’s wife, swooped up the children to take them safely to her home. Wendy was just twelve years old. She was her mother’s right arm in taking care of her ten year-old brother, Cary, seven year-old sister, Marie, four year-old brother, Drew, and her baby sister, Annie, barely one year old.
Just six months earlier, Linda had suffered cardiac arrest and had been recovering from it ever since. At first, it was easy to infer that their mother died of a heart attack, certainly it was more humane to those who could not understand. But it wasn’t too long before one of the kids, the Police chief’s son, told Wendy what really happened. “She shot herself,” Brad said authoritatively, to which Wendy angrily countered, “No, she had a heart attack!” Then, Wendy went home to find out the painful truth.
