Grant’s Last Day Alive
It started like every other day of our lives. The ending was like no other day had been. I will never get the events of that night out of my head. I will never get the feelings of that day out of my heart. The day, it couldn't have been a more tender and sweet last day. Grant woke early and left around 6 am to go flying. He loved the morning flight time, just as the sun was rising and the heat hadn’t hit yet. It invigorated him.
He came home full of life and ready for the day when he had a good morning flight. I trusted him to fly. I never worried about him. Never, not once had I ever felt nervous about him flying. He had all the experience in the world with flight and the confidence to go with it. He knew he could handle any circumstance and handle it with ease and grace. He believed nothing could happen to him. He was far too skilled. I believed that in him. I trusted him. I believed him. Nothing could happen to him. He knew that, so I believed it.
When he got home that morning, he made our morning smoothies. I made our celery juice. He loved to follow the recipe I gave him with exactness. He made it every morning since we had moved to his house. The house he loved. The one I sold. We continued with our family prayers, drinking the smoothies and getting ready for the day. It was our routine. It was beautiful as it always was. Our life was beautiful.
He buzzed around the house that day finishing projects, working in the garage and spending time with each of us. I’d had a mild but persistent migraine for most of that day, a rare occurrence except after I travel. I had just gotten back from my yoga teacher training the day before.
Our son had a therapy appointment at the house that day. We had the therapist in our guest room where he worked with our son. We’d both go in periodically to check on him. More than once we found ourselves in there together on the couch, holding hands and sitting close. The therapist worked and we asked him questions. We listened and observed. It was lovely.
Since Grant was home, I took the chance to rest in my bed for an hour in the afternoon. As I laid there, Grant came in. His unofficial office was the walk in closet where he kept his computer. He went to the closet and checked something. On his way out of the closet, he stopped at the bed, looked at me, and then lay down with me so I could just hold him. It was sweet and unexpected.
Looking back, it was almost as if he knew it was a chance he didn’t want to give up. To spend that one extra moment with me, cuddling close was important this time. He laid next to me for about 5 minutes. I relished the lovely substance of his strong body against mine. I held him with my arms wrapped around him. We were both very present. It’s as if we both knew we needed to relish that moment. Forever.
He got up and went back to his scurrying around the house. He didn’t mosey at anything. He was always in a hurry with everything, including life. Now I see, with death as well. I got up and made it as far as the floor at the foot of my bed where I keep a sheepskin. I love to lay on it and sometimes do yoga and meditations there. I positioned myself for comfort. I just laid there and looked up at the ceiling.
In a moment, I was thinking about Grant’s flying. I suddenly realized that I couldn’t remember how to use the GPS locator app he’d shown me when he started paragliding 8 months before. I thought, I should probably relearn how to use that again. In that moment, Grant walked in, saw me on the floor and smiled. I looked at him.
Quickly I mentioned, “Hey, could you show me again how to locate you on that GPS app for your paraglider. I don’t remember how to use it at all. I want to make sure I know how to find you if anything were to ever happen.” I felt an urgency all of a sudden to know how to use it. It just came over me with intense insecurity. Little did I know I’d be using that information in 6 hours to find his body.
He whipped out his phone, showed me the app, how to log onto it and where to go to find the GPS locator. It was currently in our garage. Nice and safe there. Ahh I said. Ok thanks! All of a sudden I felt better. I went back to cuddling my rug on the floor. Feeling secure again.
We continued on our day. Getting to the end of it, we read scriptures and said family prayers like we always do. It was only 7 pm on a nice summer evening. We’d finished early tonight. He was anxious to get out flying AGAIN. I’ll be back at 9:30, around dark, he said. I was just starting to feel better, but still low energy. I did not want to put all the kids to bed by myself that night. I was still feeling very insecure from being all under the weather all day.
I looked up at him, I knew he wanted to go. I wanted him to stay. In my heart I felt the words come, so strongly. “I don’t want you to go flying tonight.” I’d never felt anything like that before. I’d never not wanted him to go fly. It was the first and only time I’ve felt anything besides support for him to fly, so this was a very odd feeling.
I debated in my head. Should I say that? I’ve never felt like I didn’t want him to go flying. I measured my thoughts. I’m just feeling needy from being down all day I decided. He’ll go and come back soon. I don’t want to hold him back. This was the conversation I had in my head the last time I looked at him. And as I internally debated, he kissed me good-bye.
When he looked at me, I gave him a look of longing. What I wanted him to do was ask me how I felt, so I could say, still not that good, would you stay home tonight? He looked at me, one more time, then looked away and walked out the door. I didn’t even walk him out the door. I just laid there on the floor and listened to him walk out. I heard the sound of the door open, then close, then the garage door opened. I listened to the truck start and the garage door close. That was the last time I ever saw my husband.
He had wanted to go find a camping spot. He was gearing up for a solo camping trip where he would fly to a remote location, camp the night and fly back home in the morning. I knew he was checking out his spot. It was up on a bluff. I knew how excited he was about it. It filled this desire in him for a night of survival. That feeling of being a man that could do anything, he thrived on it, including camping in a place where no one could find him, or reach him on their own. He’d get there by flight. Well, he found such a place.
The evening passed. I got the two little boys to bed. They were so resistant that night. It was a rough night. Grant had promised to put the two older boys to bed when he got back. He said that he wanted to give them an experience, this particular night. He wanted to let them play their video games uninterrupted for 2 hours while he was gone. He’d take care of them and put them to bed once he returned. He’d promised. “I really want to give this to them,” he’d said. As if it were the last gift he could give them. Well, it was. The way he said it, now haunts me.
After the two little boys were in bed, I snuggled up in my bed to read a book. A book, I never finished and have never gone back to. I sat in my bed with my second oldest son. When it was 9:30, I looked at the clock. It was 9:30 exactly. Grant had been dead for 14 minutes. I didn’t know it yet. I wouldn’t know this till I got his trip video with the time stamp at 9:16. That’s when all movement and struggle for breath stopped and the footage went silent.
In that instant, I looked at my phone and thought… he should be home any minute. As I looked up, I thought, “Oh he is right there, he can see us. I didn’t see him, but his presence was undeniable right there looking at us. It was a feeling different than anything I’d felt with him before. There was a new distance between us, neither of us recognized at that moment. He had returned home in a different way that still somehow felt natural, though different.
I dismissed the thoughts as my meandering mind. Why would I think Grant is here when he’s clearly not home? I went back to my book. At 9:45 I suddenly felt panic. He’s still not here. I checked my phone, 9:45. It could be completely normal if he’d started talking to someone at the park about his paraglider I thought, trying to subdue my panic. I uneasily went back to my book and tried to read for another 5 minutes before the panic was more that I could ignore anymore. I grabbed my phone. SOMETHING WAS WRONG.
I looked at my phone, it had 2 missed calls. It wasn’t just me feeling it now. The neighbors had noticed his truck still at the park and his flying gear was not on it. They’d left a message. If his flying gear wasn’t there, he was in trouble. Something had happened. It was getting dark and past sunset. He was ALWAYS home before sunset. Something was wrong.
I was perturbed now, in addition to panicked, because he’d promised to get the boys off their screens also. I now had to do a job I would rather bite my own toenails off than do. He was late and they were now 20 minutes over their allotted time. I called the neighbor first. Hi, yeah, he’s not home. And if his flying gear isn’t there, we have a problem. It’s not legal to fly after sunset. He follows that rule. ALWAYS. They asked if I wanted to start a search party.
I imagined Grant at the top of the bluff with no cell phone reception, that’s why he wasn’t answering when I was calling him. I’d tried several times already, it went straight to VM as it does when he’s out of range. That wasn’t unusual. I imagined him up there out of gas, kicking himself, feeling like an idiot for running out of gas. If I started a search party and everyone was up looking for him when he was fine, he’d be embarrassed. I didn’t want to embarrass him.
No, I thought, I’ll just drive over and get him. Oh… I need to know where he was. The GPS app! I could find him. I went right to it and found his exact location. Right on the border of Utah and Arizona, an hour drive. That was really far, no wonder he didn’t have reception. I put Riley to bed. Rhys was still up and wasn’t about to go to sleep with his dad missing.
I finally said yes, let’s start a search party. In order to do that, I needed to file a missing person report. This was getting surreal. I didn’t want to make that call either. I called the local police dept. They were closed. It was now 10:20 so I called 911. I made the report. I went back into the house to check his location. He was still in the same spot. It wasn’t updating. All I could do was look at it and pray for it to update to show me his more current location. I knew that he’d be in another location. If he was out of gas or had any other problem, he would be moving toward a way to communicate. It didn’t update for almost an hour.
That’s when I finally texted Grant’s family. Even then the reality wasn’t there, it hadn’t hit me yet. I knew there was some story. I knew there was some explanation that would make it all make sense, make it all better and okay. All I said was, ‘Hi Family! Grant went out flying tonight and was supposed to be back 2 hrs. ago. We’ve got a search party beginning and need your prayers to support. Don’t freak out, we have a couple good leads on his location, but please say a prayer that we’ll find him safely.”