On Grief and Mourning part two...

The morning of Sunday October 14th 2018, My ex wife's brother in law called me and told me to
sit down because he had some bad news...

"Dave, I hate to tell you this, but Juan is gone, he's dead, he passed away last night"

I was shocked, and was angry also and began asking questions about what happened. Why was my ex brother in law telling me my son died? I was just lashing out that my son was dead...
And I couldn't get down there at that time. I lived about 70 miles away from Golden and Juan's body had already been taken away.

I was literally in shock...

My ex brother in Law to his credit calmed me down and took some anger from me that wasn't really pointed at him, but just anger...lashing out that my son was no more. My ex wife could not talk to me on the phone as she too was in complete shock because she found Juan in his bed not realizing he was gone.

Tears started flowing down my face and the awful, dreadful reality was hitting me, I wouldn't see my 20 year old son again this side of Heaven.

I mention Heaven because Juan was raised as a Christian boy and young man.
We had taken Juan and my older son Cole to all of the Churches where I played music at as a regular church musician in the Denver area since they were little boys.

Every Sunday I would get up to play music at church after playing late Saturday night gigs all over Colorado for private parties, or weddings, or Bar Mitzvahs, or corporate gigs from Aspen to Vail to Colorado Springs or every hotel in Denver that had a ballroom.

I did this as hopefully an example to my kids to try and raise them as Christians, as believers in Jesus Christ and so they could hear the Word of God preached every week while I was playing Music...

Both of my sons were baptized at the evangelical church I played at for 12 years on the same day at a large baptismal event.

 I made videos of both of them being baptized and making professions of faith in Jesus along with about 100 other kids and adults...


Juan's memorial service had to be delayed several days because his older sister Jazzy could not get to Denver until her classes at Auburn were finished so she could graduate.

I had decided not to play music at Juan's Funeral. I was just not feeling it at all... but as the week wore on I was inspired to go ahead and play the song "People Need the Lord" from my first C.D. at the memorial and It was a good thing. I think it's helping me heal faster...

I was experiencing and still am experiencing a lot of guilt also, which I'm told is also normal and part
of the grieving process....
I was not there when My son died, and I couldn't get down there before his body was taken from my exes house.

Juan and I had numerous disagreements since he was a child, about everything from him not wanting to leave after school program and go home, to when he was younger and we would be at Target or Wal-Mart where he'd insist on playing game demos for a half hour, then an hour later and I had to struggle with him to get him out of the store.

I know, every parent is thinking "Well, we've all had to do that" but I doubt if you had to try and pull your son up off the floor in the middle of Target or Wal-Mart while he was screaming "He's hurting me!, He's hurting me! Help! Help!" and everyone is looking at you like you're a terrible parent...

As I've stated before Juan had severe trouble trusting ANYONE in authority because of the abuse he suffered in his natural moms drug and alcohol infused home. and it manifested itself in almost every situation whether in the house or in Public places like grocery stores or even church or the charter school where both my ex and I taught at.

End of blog two "On Grief and Mourning" blog three coming..