The Texas Widow

I’m obsessed by this story of the widow of the man who got shot on the Texas Mexico border.  I can’t figure out what to think about it.

I’ve read some of the articles and seen some of the stories on the news, and I just don’t know what to make of it.

I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be her. 

On the one hand, it seems everyone is skeptical.  I found myself slightly skeptical, too.

The story is, a husband and wife were going on jet skis on a lake that is on the border between Texas and Mexico to take photos of a partially submerged old church.  They were attacked by pirates and he was shot.   She couldn’t get his body onto her jet ski, and she felt she had to leave him there to escape, and now they can’t get the body returned to them.  In the process of investigation, a Mexican official’s body with a severed head was left outside a government building, presumably as a warning to back off the investigation.

When I originally thought about all of this, I thought, even if he outweighed her by double, with her adrenaline going, she could have gotten him on her jetski.  But then I remembered that they wanted me to move Sawan from the bed to the floor to do CPR and I was too afraid to.  So, there’s that.

And it seems sketchy that they can’t find the body if he was wearing a life vest.  But, I think that means that the pirates came and took him, not foul play by the wife.

I think that it’s so sad that the wife is always the first person that they look at.  She’s going through enough. 

I just have so much compassion for her in this situation.

To have to lose your husband, and have been there in the middle of your worst nightmare, and be so frightened, and then to have to put your grieving on hold while you try to get everything sorted out.  To have no body to be able to use for a funeral or a memorial service,  to feel like you had to do all this press before it was too late, while you’re in the state that you’re in, when nothing makes any sense, and on top of that to have people not believing that you’re telling the whole truth, would just be so devastating on whole new levels. 

I remember at the beginning feeling like I was, on a small scale, a “People Magazine” article.  Like my story was one of those sensational ones that you just never hear so every acquaintance I had ever met wanted to know what was going on.  I literally had a client call the salon and use the words “I just want to get the scoop.”  (She’s no longer a client.)

But to actually BE in People Magazine, in the middle of the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, with no training for how to be in the spotlight, has to be bewilderment on a whole new level.

Not only has she lost her love, but she’s lost her anonymity, and is having to grieve in such a public way.  My heart just breaks for her.