Friday night around 4:15pm, Mom and Pat stop to drop Keeby off for the night while they head to an Aaron Tippin concert at a Spokane casino. Pat comes in the house and says there's a duck in the road that about got hit by a car. I decide to help it (in my sock monkey slippers) and end up herding it two blocks down the road, through 4 yards before I get it between my and the neighbors house. It seems to really want to get into the neighbors yard, so the goal is to pick it up (but I have a weird fear of beaks). It ends up panicking and falling into their basement window well, so I get in and try to corner it. With Mom's help holding up her coat so it wouldn't fly away, I end up grabbing it and lifting it out of the hole to mom who placed it over the fence. We did it! I pace for like 2 hours hoping it's actually my neighbors, and ran over when she arrived from work. After telling her, she is grateful and states that should earn me it's meat when they slaughter it. WTF. I should have let it run away :(
Later that evening around 9pm, Dad calls and says he's on the way to Gritman for a constant pain in his side. We are thinking gallstone or kidney stone, etc. Bro comes over and we arrive at the ER and wait. Seeing Dad, you could tell he was hurting. :( We spent about 2.5 hours in the ER and they admitted Dad to keep an eye on him. They essentially could only find out he has a swollen blockage from his kidney, and they don't know what it is or why. We leave around midnight after they check him in. He checked out the following mid-morning with pain meds and went home to monitor it. Still hoping it's a stone rather than something worse. I'm sure stones hurt, but at least it will pass..
Saturday was the 10th, and would've been Great Grandma's 97th birthday. I miss her terribly.
Saturday around 4pm, I decide to clean up the shop (which I've been waiting for mom to do since it's her mess). I moved all my "don't need to open but want to keep" boxes in there, and felt much better. When I check my phone, I see multiple texts about a shooting around 2:30 in town. WHAT THE FUCK? I kept praying it wouldn't be anyone I know, and tried to stay positive. Facebook was blowing up with different stories, but we knew there were multiple victims in at least two locations.
Around 7, the police released the names of the suspect and the victims, I knew 2 out of 4 victims. This is awful :( One was Belinda from Arby's who has been a friend of ours for about 3 years. She lights up everytime she sees us (but especially my son), and he adores her. The two male victims were David Trail and Michael Chin. Michael is my favorite teacher from high school's son, but I've never met him. He's currently fighting for his life, and is the only victim still alive. The fourth victim was a woman I have admired for about a decade - my go-to all-around awesome doctor and friend Terri Grzebielski. Terri meant a lot to me. She helped me through my anxiety meds journey, my panicky health concerns that were always less a deal than they seemed, she always lit up and smiled..no matter what. She was just an angel..always calm, collected, comforting. The shooter was John Lee, her adopted adult son. I'm literally in shock. Then I found out that Terri lived at 412 Veatch, which would've literally been in my backyard when I lived at 417 Spotswood. I didn't realize she lived so close to me.
Reports say John fled in a black Honda and eventually crashed it about 10 miles North of Colfax. Since he's alive, I hope he explains (not like it'll suddenly make sense). I hope he sits in jail and rots. I recall seeing an Asian male in a black Honda hatchback when I lived in my old apartments, and after seeing the pic of the car, I know it was John I was seeing. He would fit the description and age. This is just so close to home.... I really hope they figure out the motive and the connection between all the victims because it's so senseless and just plain fucked up. I can't believe this is real.
I don't know how to tell my son that his buddy Belinda is dead. I don't know how to swallow that the best doc I've ever had is gone. I had it on my to-do list to call her and make one last appointment with her before my health insurance lapsed, and now I will never get to. The world is a harsh place.
Living in a small town is lovely sometimes, but knowing the victims of all the main shootings here in town is heartbreaking. It's just beyond tragic and my heart is heavy.
RIP.
