A New Year and New Life. Saying Goodbye to A Challenging Year!

I did it! I made it through my year from HELL!!!

I just left my financial advisors office. I’ve been meeting with him every few months following my husbands suicide to track my financial progress. These visits have been the motivation I have needed to keep moving along throughout the year. This advisor has been the only person that has had faith that I can make it through this year and still come out ahead in the long run. He has been a major lifeline for me through all of this.

If you missed my intro post, I was married for 16 years. I helped put my husband through medical school, an internship, residency and a fellowship. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the middle of all of this following a delusional manic episode. Needless to say he was not very good with the finances. When the big bucks began to roll in he was in heaven and kept us living paycheck to paycheck. He purchased everything and anything he could think of rather than setting things up to make sure his family would be ok if anything were to happen to him.

Boy did things happen… He attacked me during a med withdrawal in June of 2016… Withdrawal symptoms from this particular medication include such things as extreme agitation and aggression among many other things. I packed my kids and I up following this and moved back home to Utah to be near my family.

He was arrested the night of the attack. He left the house suicidal so the cops were legally able to ping his phone and follow his movements. They arrested him on his way back home… scary… I don’t like to think about why he was coming back home.

We lived in a fairly small conservative Texas city. Arrests are published in the local paper. Someone saw this and had a problem with a local physician being arrested on assault charges so they filed an anonymous complaint with the hospital. This put him and his license up for investigation. He was asked to not return back to work until the investigation was complete.

Well, the investigation drug on and on… I wasn’t willing to ask the DA to drop the felony charge; I didn’t want to make any moves that could risk him gaining any type of custody of our two kids. He and his attorney refused to take the deal the DA was offering him. I can’t remember the term for it. The charges would have stayed on his record for five years but he wouldn’t have seen any jail time. He would have gone into a 5 year monitoring program where his mental health would be followed. They wanted to make sure he stayed in therapy and that he stayed on his meds. The DA’s office felt it would be best for our children if he was able to keep his medical license but they also wanted to see him healthy. A win-win as I see it. In my mind this held him accountable for his actions AND made sure that he maintained his mental health so that the kids and I could feel safe. I also saw this as the only way to make sure the kids had a mentally stable father.

Towards the end of September 2016 the hospital director called him in for a meeting. He thought for sure they were going to tell him he could return back to work but that was not the case. They sat him down and gave him two options. They either fire him or he resigns. He resigned and they gave him a pretty shotty severance package. I think they figured they had been paying him for four months of not working so they gave him two more months pay and called it good. They didn’t offer him the option to keep his disability and life insurance. I think at this point they viewed him and his mental health as a financial risk to the hospital and said good riddance. I think they knew they would end up paying a disability claim or worse case scenario, paying out on a life insurance claim and only saw him as a liability.

The events of the attack and the arrest triggered a manic state and he rode that high for about three months but a depression always follows. He began to fall into a depressive state a few weeks before he was “fired” so this was devastating for him. I had to send a well check to the house that evening and they took him back to the hospital for a 72 hour hold.

He believed he would never be able to work in his field again and was too depressed to look for work elsewhere. He continued to grow more and more depressed as he ran out of money to pay his bills and he took his life in January of this year.

The divorce process was on hold through all of the criminal stuff so I suddenly found myself responsible for all of his bills as well as mine; not to mention caring for two small grieving children. I quickly did a financial analysis and my comfortable eight month nest egg shrank to three.

I went back to TX and made funeral arrangements with his family then stayed longer to go through all of our belongings. I set up an estate sale and went back home to Utah to tackle the long list of things he left me to deal with. When he knew he was going to commit suicide he told me that he couldn’t do everything. He couldn’t get our home or other assets on the market. He just couldn’t make himself do it. I asked him how I would do it if he killed himself. I have the kids, I live in a different state, and I have my own bills to worry about. I tried to convince him that it would be best if he focused on himself; making himself healthy and only worried about his bills. I told him to let me worry about my bills and how to take care of the kids. His response was, “You’re smart, you’re strong. You will figure it out.”

Moving along with the story… I contacted my divorce attorney and she passed me onto the family planning lawyer in her group. He immediately began to file the paperwork to get the probate hearing scheduled. Of course there was no will… This put me in a position where I had to cover a physicians bills without a physicians salary. This was just a bit stressful. ;-)

I don’t know if you know much about the probate process but it can be lengthy. I had to wait nearly six months to sell any of our assets. Which meant that I had to cover those assets in the meantime so that I wouldn’t lose them. The social security death benefits eventually came through and that helped but it was less than 10% of his income. I watched my accounts quickly drain every month.

After almost a full year of work trying to settle our estate, with no time for a real job, things finally began to fall into place. I got rid of both of our cars in July and decreased that expense by almost 80%. The house went under contract just over a month later and the sale of our final major joint asset completed just weeks ago.

I had strong goals throughout all of this. It took twice as long as I hoped but I made it! I wanted it to end with a certain amount in the bank so I could have a decent down payment on a future family home. It ended with 20% less than I wanted but that’s ok. After this year I will take what I can get!

My year from hell is officially over. I will be starting this coming new year in a home of our own and my very own investment portfolio! I’ll be setting up my will and my own life insurance policy so that I never put another through the things I went through this year. I have set myself up financially to continue to work for myself from home so that I can be around for the kids.

We no longer get to know what it feels like to be part of the top 3% but that’s ok with me. Like my husband said, “You’re smart, you’re strong. You will figure it out.” I did figure it out and I did well! As my financial advisor told me early on, “When people that are use to a certain income find themselves in a situation as you are in now, they find a way to get back to that.” I will figure that out as well! I finally feel like I can relax and celebrate the accomplishment of making it through this year.

I’m looking forward to having all of this stress gone and being able to focus my energy into my children and myself. We have all suffered this year but it’s time to build and grow and HEAL as a family.

On my way home from my advisors office "Sia, Angel By The Wings" came on the Radio. The chorus really resonated with me at that moment. I tried to replay it to listen to the lyrics but kept drifting off in thought and would be pulled back in with the chorus. I’d hear the first part, drift off, then “feel” the chorus because, I can do anything!

And so can you!!

“Oh so, your wounds they show
I know you have never felt so alone
But hold on, head up, be strong
Oh hold on, hold on until you hear them come
Here they come, oh

Take an angel by the wings
Beg her now for anything
Beg her now for one more day
Take an angel by the wings
Time to tell her everything
Ask her for the strength to stay

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

You can, you can do anything, anything
You can do anything
You can, you can do anything, anything
You can do anything
You can, you can do anything, anything
You can do anything
You can, you can do anything, anything
You can do anything”