I find this memory hard to talk about. And I often don't think of it... But it must be acknowledged... I know that Evan remembers this better than me, but this is my version. Parker was a tiny thing, about 2 years old. Chase was 4 and Brayden was 5. It was after Thanksgiving four years ago and we had drinks at our friends house down the street after we had our thanksgiving meal together as a family of 5. I proceeded to get unforgivingly black out drunk with our neighbors, and then Evan drove us home from down the street. It was only 3 houses, but it was 3 minutes too long. I passed out in the car in the passenger seat, and it was probably close to 9:00pm. When we got back to our house, the kids were all very tired and cranky. Evan walked the boys upstairs to their bedrooms and I mumbled, half awake that I would grab Parker from her carseat. Well. I didn't. I fell back asleep in the freezing cold garage. Evan didn't know this. He was putting the kids to bed upstairs, changing them into pajamas, brushing their teeth and tucking them in. Down in the 30 degree cold, pitch black, dark garage, Parker sat screaming bloody murder strapped into her car seat, while I sat slumped over in the passenger seat, passed out cold. I was dead to the world, that I couldn't hear my two year old daughter screaming for me to get her out of the car right behind me. She was even kicking my seat. What if the car had been running? What if Evan was too drunk and went and fell asleep in bed with one of the boys and never found us? What if it was an unreasonably cold night of 10 degrees? These thoughts haunt me. Thankfully, Evan came down around 5 minutes later and heard Parker screaming, tears and snot covering her face. He opened my car door and I nearly rolled out onto the garage pavement. He screamed at me and left me there. I was barely able to crawl into the mudroom, where he left me and never came back for me. I passed out again and slept there all night long, where I woke up around 4am, completely confused, cold and disoriented. I stumbled upstairs laughing to myself, until I horrifyingly had flashbacks of what I did only hours before. I stumbled to all of my babies rooms to check on them. Thankfully, they were each sleeping peacefully, all thanks to my incredible husband. I put myself to bed and woke a few hours later with awful guilt and a pain in my neck from sleeping on the cold mudroom floor. The look on my husband's face the next morning though, I will never forget.
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