Chapter One: The Day Before

Filed under: Things You Don’t Realize Matter Until It’s Too Late

I didn’t know it was going to be the last normal day.
But I guess that’s how last normal days always work.

I was on vacation. Not a big trip or anything, just a couple weeks off work with no real plans except basketball games and maybe knocking out a few airplane projects with Dad.

He had this Challenger aircraft. Great little plane, but with a frustrating habit of running out of gas right when it was starting to get fun. Eight-gallon tanks tucked into the fuselage meant you were always flying with one eye on the fuel gauge and one hand doing mental math about how far you could push it.

We were trying to fix that.

That day, we were at an experimental aircraft factory, kicking around ideas for how to give the thing some legs. There was a guy named Chuck Hamilton from Hamilton Tech who had built a similar aircraft but with integrated wing tanks. Same basic design. Just… smarter. More capable. Dad wanted to see if we could retrofit that idea into one of his own Challengers.

We talked about it for hours. The viability. The weight trade-offs. The possible FAA paperwork it would probably trigger. We went over the specs like we were building a spaceship, not some backwoods bird with a 2-stroke engine.

After that, we grabbed lunch at Steak and Shake. Sat across from each other like we had a lot of times before. No deep talk. No confessions. Just burgers, fuel tanks, and the unspoken language of dads and sons who build stuff together.

Before we parted ways, he said he’d see me the next day at my daughter’s basketball game.
That was the plan.
That was always the plan.

I drove back to Morrison.

I was 32 years old.

The next morning, I got the call.

It was mid-morning. I don’t remember what I was doing when the phone rang, but I remember the exact words:

“You need to get to the hospital. Your dad’s been injured.”

That was it. Injured.

It’s funny how one word can carry a hundred different meanings. Looking back, I know why they said it that way. They were trying to buy time. Trying to ease me into it. But at the time, all I had was that word—injured—and a gut feeling that something had gone really, really sideways.

The sky that morning was what we’d call IFR in pilot speak. Instrument Flight Rules.
Gray. Heavy. Overcast to the minimums.

The kind of sky that whispers stay grounded.

I couldn’t imagine my dad was flying in that. He was VFR-only. He didn’t fly unless he could see the horizon. I was the only one in the family flying IFR back then.

So the idea that it was a crash? Didn’t compute.

The drive to the hospital was about 45 miles. I’m sure I hit red lights. But I didn’t see them. Every light that day was green as far as I was concerned. Green meant “go,” and I was going—fast enough to set a land-speed record between Morrison and the Quad Cities. I’m just thankful I didn’t kill anyone getting there.

Funny thing is, I don’t remember the radio.
Don’t remember the traffic.
Don’t remember anything between hanging up the phone and walking through the hospital doors.

But I do remember the smell.
All hospitals smell the same.

A minister met me when I got inside.

Let me stop right there.

If you ever walk into a hospital and a minister meets you at the door, just sit down.
That’s not a good sign. That’s not a “he sprained his wrist” situation. That’s a “your life is about to split open” moment.

He didn’t say much at first. Just that he’d take me to someone who could explain more.

We got in the elevator, and I finally pressed him.

“What’s going on?”

There was a pause. Like the air got stuck in his throat.

Then he said it:

“Your dad’s been shot.”

I just blinked.
Shot? What do you mean shot?

My brain did what brains do when they’re trying to make chaos make sense:

• Robbery?
• Some break-in at the hangar?
• Wrong place, wrong time?

And then the minister added one more line that changed everything:

“His wife is in custody.”

His wife.

She was 20 years younger than my dad.
Only about seven years older than me.
That had always felt off… but not this kind of off.

And just like that, the world tilted.

They took me to a room.

Some of my aunts were there. My uncle. My grandma—my dad’s mom.
The family was already trying to make contact with my brothers and my sister. They set up a conference call so we could all be “together.”

But I was the only one actually there.

Which meant it was up to me.

They asked me to identify him.

I’ve been through a lot of things since then, but nothing touches that walk into that room.

My dad was laying there, eyes stitched shut from the concussion of the gunshot.
A ventilator forced air into his lungs.
There were tubes. Machines. Beeps.

Less than 24 hours before, we were talking about fuel tanks over burgers.

Now I was standing in a room trying to figure out if I was looking at the same man.

I think I went into some kind of shock.
Just… silence.

I don’t remember the drive back to Morrison.
Couldn’t tell you what color the sky was, or who said what.
The only thing I remember was this feeling like the world had permanently tilted off its axis, and no one else seemed to notice.

It would take me years to understand how much changed that day.
And how much more was coming.

But this was the start.
And I knew it.

Somewhere in the Bible…

There’s this part in Job where everything gets ripped away—his kids, his health, his home, his future.

Gone.

No warning. No explanation. Just… gone.

And then the people who are supposed to love him show up and start throwing theology at the wreckage like it’ll help. They meant well, I guess. But they talked too much and understood too little.

That part used to frustrate me.
I’d read it and think, how could anyone survive that?

Now I get it.
Because I’ve lived it.

And not all at once like Job—mine came in waves.
But the feeling was the same: standing in the middle of your life, holding pieces of people you can’t put back together, while the world keeps turning like it didn’t just lose something holy.

So yeah. I used to think Job was just a story.
Now I know better.

That was the beginning.

The part where normal slipped out the back door, and I didn’t even notice it leaving.

Next week, I’ll tell you what came after—the hours that blurred together, the questions nobody wanted to ask, and how a funeral can somehow feel both too soon and way too late.

See you then.