I don’t remember anything for about 3 days after I found out Brandon was arrested for Joe’s murder. I have very little memory of that time. I don’t know if I even left my bed. I recall my friends crying with me. My mom and my sister trying to get me to eat. My sons checking on me. My daughter leaving me a note. My brother came right away. They collectively took care of June and Jay.
When Brandon and I started hanging out I had no idea about his past. Neither one of us were into sharing too much. We both had just left our spouses. Eventually we both lost our Fathers and we experienced that together. We hung out every couple weeks on the weekends, sometimes just once a month. The first time we hung out he took me to a book store and bought me “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck. It is a story of good and evil. It’s always been a favorite of mine. There’s only one other person who bought me that book before, my former business partner and friend who betrayed me. Everyone has a Judas. The theme of that story seems to have seeped into my life.
I was very vulnerable. I was fighting battles that not many people knew about. My daughter’s health issues which in itself were traumatizing. Joe Shymanski’s craziness. The loss of time with my youngest children. Brandon was a relief from those battles. He made me smile. It was a distraction. Looking back, his trauma and my trauma, although very different, maybe was a connecting point that I didn’t realize. I didn’t know.
My Dad liked to talk to him, they both had been in war. He called my Dad “Old Soldier”.
He came to me in the middle of the night after my divorce trial. After facing my abuser’s lies, accusations, and the people Joe had dragged along to trash my name, I was extremely traumatized. Brandon held me for hours as I shook.
He checked in with me to make sure I was ok when I had to be around Joe. He knew I was scared and felt unsafe. He knew these things, but it was my understanding and desire that he stay out of it. I could handle it. We never got into details of all the things that I went through with Joe. He did not know the details. I wanted it that way.
When I did find out about his past, his convictions. I was stunned. I did not know how to process that. How could that be the same person? I experienced the good side of him not realizing that he struggled so hard to control and suppress the other side. What happened to him is horrific. Being sexually abused as a young boy, having it alter your brain to that degree. It still makes me sick. Having that be your destiny thrust on you from your childhood is just so sad. It makes me cry. It ruined him.
When he was arrested I did not see him for quite some time. It was a lot to process and understand. I told him I would still be his friend. Somehow. I am not a fair weather friend. I had a lot of love for him. He felt deeply for me.
I did go to his house in August before Joe died. I didn’t like the way our last conversation had gone. I just wanted to talk to him. We laid in his bed. We held each other. We cried. We knew we couldn’t be together. It was extraordinarily sad. He was one of my closest friends at that time. We had always joked that I could escape to his house whenever I needed to disappear. A mini getaway so I could have a breather … only 45 minutes away.
That was the last time I saw him.
How that place turned out to be where the most grisly thing imaginable would happen is hard for me to reconcile.
