Man...I could use some trail time. It's been a f***ed up week.
Thursday at 5am, my mom texts me. She doesn't understand the whole "time zone" thing, so it's not unusual. But this was something I'd want to be woken up for.
As i rolled over and read the text, you could have given me 1 million guesses...hell, 10 million as to what I was going to read, and I still wouldn't have been close. My cousin, about 11 years my senior, had shot his wife, and then himself. They were 57 years old.
We are all in shock, mostly due to the fact that this totally seems out of character for him. He was more the type to tell them where the door was than to fawn over "lost love"...and that's one aspect I couldn't wrap my head around. After getting some info today, it's seems slightly less shocking...for lack of a better term, and it might not have been so much about that.
Apparently, they have been on the rocks for some time, though few people knew it, and she had been seeing someone else, despite what seems like an honest effort to work through things. According to the information I got today, she had returned to his residence after being gone for a few weeks, and was removing belongings. According to the same source, should already removed money from bank accounts, and left little in the house.
My guess would be that he arrived home and interrupted this process, they got into an argument, and he shot her in a rage. A short time later, probably realizing what he'd done and that he was going to spend the rest of his life dealing with it, probably from prison, he decided it was best just to end his too. All just conjecture on my part.
It was his stepson (her son from a previous) and brother who found them...and I can't even imagine what that must have been like for them.
There are a few people in my family where this wouldn't have surprised me, but from this guy it was totally a surprise. People say he had a bad temper, but to me it wasn't so much someone that would go off the handle and kill someone as he was somebody who just didn't have a high tolerance for b******* and would let you know. I honestly think the fact that she was leaving had little to do with this.
And that's the part that really kind of bites: whenever there was work to be done for someone in his family, he was the first one to show up. To me he was about as even-keeled as anyone I've ever known. He was always around, always reliable, and would always help you if you needed help. And for his life to end this way just seems completely and totally unfair. The whole world seems to be going crazy, and there are days where I'm just completely disillusioned by it.
My family could use your prayers.
DEEP GAP — A married couple was found dead from apparent gunshot wounds in Deep Gap on the night of July 8, according to the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office. The
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