Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (22 page)

Among the first portions of the wedding festivities were the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. Both were amazing. Beth had purchased new outfits for all of Dad’s kids, including those of us who were adults. For the dinner we had an outdoor clambake and a live band, and we all danced the night away. I remember being so happy. I was on top of the world that night with a wonderful
career, the show was going strong, and I was in love with the man of my dreams. It remains one of the best times of my life.

But after the rehearsal dinner nothing, nothing at all, went as planned.

The morning of Dad’s wedding I was in my hotel room when the phone rang. I checked the caller ID and saw it was my mother. I didn’t want to deal with her this early on my dad’s wedding day, so I didn’t answer. But a minute later the phone rang again. I knew if she called back it must be important, so I answered and was surprised to find John on the other end of the line. “Lyssa,” he said, “the troopers just left. Your sister was in a terrible car accident and she didn’t make it.”

Just like that, my safe, secure, happy little world dropped out from under my feet. Barbara was gone? It couldn’t be. But I knew by the somber tone of John’s voice that it was. The big sister who had taken such good care of me when she was just a child, the wise sister I once turned to for advice, love, comfort, and guidance, was dead. She was just twenty-three.

I went outside, fell onto the ground, and screamed, “No, no,
no
!” as tears streamed down my face. I later learned that Barbara was riding in a stolen SUV the evening before with a guy named Scott Standefer when the vehicle left the roadway, hit an embankment, rolled, crashed into some trees, and landed upside down. Both Barbara and Scott were killed.

I thought of the night before, when we had all been dancing so
happily. Little did we know that Barbara was already dead. How could I have not recognized that? She was my sister. I should have felt something when she left this earth.

I was shaking, and hysterical with grief, but I knew I had to tell my dad and Beth. But first I went inside to tell Bo. It took a few minutes for me to dress and gather myself together; then I walked down the hallway of our hotel to deliver the devastating news. All the way I kept thinking, “this can’t be happening,” “this isn’t real,” “what kind of nightmare is this?”

In the previous months, I had asked Dad many times to bring Barbara down for the wedding, but he wouldn’t hear any talk of it. At first he said there was no room, or that she had legal issues in Alaska that kept her from attending. But I think that he and Beth didn’t want her drug use or her sometimes wild behavior to ruin the big day. It was his way of practicing tough love, but that morning I thought that if she had been here with us, with her family, she might still be living on earth. Now I realize that only God knows the answer to that.

Just before I got to the honeymoon suite where Dad and Beth were staying I ran into a friend of Beth’s. She could tell I was upset, and when I relayed the news she said, “You can’t tell Beth; it’s her wedding day.”

Those words infuriated me. It may have been Beth’s wedding day, but my dad deserved to know that his daughter was dead. Before I could knock on the door of the suite, however, Beth came
around the corner of the hall. When I told her the news she cried, “Oh, f— no. No! Not today.” Then Beth opened the door to the two-story suite and went upstairs to tell Dad.

The deafening silence lasted for a full minute, then another. Then I heard a gut-wrenching scream from my dad, followed by “Not my Barbara Katie. My Barbara Katie!” Barbara was Dad’s oldest daughter, and I know he loved her from the bottom of his heart.

I can’t begin to explain to you how distressed I was by Barbara’s passing. The sadness I felt was beyond anything I had ever known. It was heartbreaking to me that I had found my way out of the dysfunction of my upbringing but Barbara hadn’t. Why hadn’t I done more to help her? Why hadn’t anyone done more? Survivor’s guilt kicked in like a sucker punch to my stomach. Why was I the one who was on the show and not Barbara? Why was I the one who had gotten her life together? But I didn’t have time to deal with any of that. I had a wedding to attend.

After the initial shock, Dad called everyone to the patio: Beth, Leland, Duane Lee, Cecily, the entire A&E production team and crew, a few others, and me. I saw another side of my brothers that day as they all cried huge tears of true grief. I hadn’t known that they had loved Barbara so much.

There was a lot of emotional discussion of rescheduling the wedding, and most of the people lamented, “Why did it have to happen now, of all times?” My thought was that we should at least take the day to mourn Barbara and recover from the shock—move the wedding to the next day. All of the guests and crew would still
be there. But when cameras are involved, moving a wedding is not that easy. A&E had spent a lot of money on the wedding, and Dad really wanted to marry Beth. “God doesn’t kill your daughter to stop you from getting married,” Dad eventually said to Duane Lee. That quote ended up as part of the
Dog the Bounty Hunter
episode that covered the wedding. I couldn’t forget even then that cameras recorded
every
part of our lives.

The wedding was held as planned.

Dad and the Reverend Tim Storey arrived by water on a platform between two canoes. Dad was dressed all in white and looked very striking. Beth carried a huge bouquet of peach and white flowers and was teary-eyed as she walked down the aisle at the foot of the hotel’s grand staircase. Dad, overcome with emotion, walked partway up the aisle to greet her.

After, at the reception, Dad told the guests about Barbara and that our family wanted the reception to be a celebration of both Dad and Beth’s marriage, and Barbara’s life. As you can imagine, it was an emotional event and there were lots of hugs and tears amid the smiles.

I took the opportunity to get drunk. Barbara had always said that when she died she wanted everyone to have a big party, so I guessed this was it. After, I immediately went home to Oahu. Since then, we sometimes go to the Big Island on business. Dad and Beth usually stay in the same room they did for their wedding. As for me, I can’t even stay in the same hotel. I guess everyone grieves differently.

The wedding took place on May 20, and the last time I had spoken to Barbara was on May 17. By this time Barbara was shooting drugs into her system with needles, and she was upset that she and Tucker were the only of Dad’s children who had not been invited. (Tucker wasn’t invited because he was in prison.) Barbara told me she had gotten in the habit of sleeping on her stomach on top of all her possessions because the people she was around stole things from her when she slept. I wanted to put little Travis on the phone, but she said no. It was too hard to hear his voice. Too depressing. That was the last time I talked to her.

Knowing that little Travis was not in the car with my sister got me through that terrible time. But I was conflicted because I also knew that without Travis, Barbara had gone completely off track. I remember praying, and God telling me that He was so sorry that Barbara had to go. He told me He was also sorry that I was so sad now but that Barbara was no longer in pain and was happy.

I’ve also dreamed about Barbara. She told me not to feel bad for her; she was with our grandmother and all of our former dogs. In fact, she said she felt bad for me because I was still here on earth.

Since then I often have a recurring nightmare of walking through the Valley of Death and fighting off all kinds of horrible things before emerging to a beautiful place. In my waking hours I feel strongly connected to Barbara’s presence every day. Barbara had always loved butterflies, and now whenever I see a butterfly I feel like she is still around.

★

Bo was my rock as he comforted me in my bottomless grief. He was at the hotel with me when we learned the news and he said all the right things to keep me functioning as best I could, even later, when the media wouldn’t leave us alone. Whenever I was ready to try to move on I’d see yet another headline:
DOG’S DAUGHTER KILLED IN STOLEN CAR
. I was as broken as I had ever been, but it was during this time that the love and kindness Bo directed toward me filled me with the desire to be married to him. I was thrilled that he felt the same way; it just took time and a near disaster to get there.

On Valentine’s Day 2007, Bo asked me to be his wife. I had found the ring in his sock drawer some weeks earlier and knew he was going to ask. I just didn’t know when or where. We had spent part of the day at Dad and Beth’s, and I got the feeling he was going to ask when we were there, but it didn’t feel right to me, so I kept myself busy. After we got home, however, Bo began rubbing my feet while we were sitting on the couch. He then professed his love for Abbie and me and asked me to be his wife. I was thrilled to accept!

Four days later, however, tragedy almost struck. Dad and Beth had gone out of town, and we were watching the kids. Before they left, Beth cautioned me to watch Bo’s daughter, Serene, around the pool. Dad and Beth had just given Serene, who was eighteen months old, a princess makeup kit complete with shoes
that clacked all over the house when she wore them. After Dad and Beth left, we checked all the sliding doors in the house that opened to the pool and sat down to watch a movie. I was comforted by the clack-clack sound of Serene walking through the house—until I realized I didn’t hear the sound anymore. Bo and I jumped up and ran through the house. The last room we checked was Dad and Beth’s bedroom, and there we found the slider open to the pool.

Our worst nightmare was realized when we saw Serene floating facedown on top of the water. Bo jumped to her and flailed the arms of her limp, seemingly lifeless body wildly after he got her onto the patio. I screamed for Cecily to call 911 and dropped to my knees to pray.

Then the most amazing thing happened. Two pictures popped into my head, one of Barbara and one of a tiny casket, and then a voice in my head said, “Get up off your butt and go over there and help that baby.” I had taken a CPR class in seventh grade and somehow remembered what to do, so I took Serene from Bo, tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and breathed into her.

I couldn’t feel the air go into her, though; it was as if Serene was already dead. But I kept breathing, then I did a bunch of chest pumps, and then I breathed some more. Finally Serene threw up a bunch of water. I picked her up and ran for the gate at the end of Dad’s driveway, hoping to get her to the emergency personnel who were on their way a fraction of a second sooner.

The firefighters who showed up just about then told me I had
saved Serene’s life. We feel that she had been without oxygen for two to three minutes, and the only lingering damage was a sensitivity to chlorine, which has decreased as she has gotten older. I can honestly say that while I am glad I know how to do it, performing CPR is one thing I hope I
never
have to do again.

We had a second little “God” moment that day. Travis, Garry Boy, and Abbie had been playing in Garry’s room, and inexplicably the doorknob jammed right about the time Serene fell into the pool, locking them all in. It is such a blessing to me that these kids did not have to witness Serene’s apparently lifeless body or the frantic activities of Bo and me as we desperately tried to keep her from leaving us.

Even though I did not give birth to Serene, something of me jumped inside her that day and bonded us. And I am so thankful to Barbara for giving me the jump start to go to Serene and help her. If not for my sister’s words from heaven, Serene might not be with us today.

One weekend in the first part of 2007, I agreed to up my commitment to Bo and move in with him. While I would do things very differently today, in my mind back then the next step in our engagement was living together. Actually, I had waited this long only because it had been made clear to Bo and me that if we moved in together, little Travis would stay with Dad and Beth.

I also knew that Dad and Beth wouldn’t approve of our cohabitation if we were not married, even though they themselves
had lived together for many years before they were married. So in the middle of the night I packed up Abbie’s and my things and moved in with Bo and Serene. I was thrilled to become a surrogate mother to Serene, as I didn’t want her to grow up without a mom, as I had in my early years. Bo was very good to Abbie, too, and I was so deeply in love that I thought I had found the perfect man. Unfortunately, perfect men, perfect people, do not exist.

★

I
loved being married to
Bo, and I adored being a mom to Serene. Even though we don’t use the word in our family, inside I have felt either like a “step” child or “step” sibling all my life. The word “step” also made me feel like I was half of something. I was half a daughter, half a sister, half an aunt. I was never a whole or all of any kind of relationship.

I knew there were a lot of barriers in raising children who were not biologically yours. With Travis, who was as much my child as anyone’s, I loved him and then he was taken away, then I was able to love him once more, then he was gone again. Over and over this cycle repeated itself. Sometimes Travis left with Barbara, other times he was with Dad and Beth, and sometimes he was with his own dad. It was traumatic for him and heart-wrenching for me.

I didn’t want Serene to have to go through that, so I put all thoughts of the words “step” and “half” out of my head and raised and loved her as my own. To this day she calls me Mom. The first thing I did was put Serene in the private all-girls Catholic school that Abbie went to. Abbie was just five, but had attended a preschool there since she was three. We were not Catholic, but the school was by far the best school I could find. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, they taught good values and encouraged the development of social skills, athletics, music, and art. Cecily and Bonnie Jo also attended the school.