My wife had been upset at me for the few months before Banning, the dog, and the car happened. the day I lost myself. She told me I was spending less and less time with her and more with Banning. She told me that she felt I didn't love her enough. She told me she needed more from me. Maybe I knew it was going to happen. Maybe that's why my wife felt I was spending so much time with Banning. Maybe I knew it was our last days together. I can't say I did, if I did I would have stopped it. If I knew it would have never happened. I told her "maybe I just love my son."
Losing Banning tore us apart, and at the same time pulled us closer. Einin Keela was and is my wife. She is one of two girls in the most Irish family I have ever met, outside of Ireland of course. I call her Nin. She is the freshest and most radiant person I have ever seen. We met just after high school. I was dating Eileen Peterson at the time, my first girlfriend. Eileen and I had been together for two years, but it hadn't been going so well as of late. Eileen and I were out shopping. I wasn't shopping, just tagging along with her. She was looking for shoes for her brother's wedding. He was six years older than her, Haidan Peterson, and his wedding was a few weeks away. I had been invited as Eileen's date.
That's when I saw her. I was sitting on a bench outside of a fancy shoe store where Eileen was. She was with two of her friends next to a pretzel shop. She wasn't eating a pretzel though, both of her friends were, but she wasn't. She was chewing gum, and boy could she chew gum. I don't know what came over me, I walked straight up to her and said hello. I payed no attention to her friends, and she told me a few months later they thought I was very rude because I didn't acknowledge them. "Hi, I'm Dacklin." "Hello, my name is Einin. Einin Keela." That's all it took for me.
Two weeks later Eileen and I were no more. I didn't go to her brother's wedding. Two and a half weeks later Einin and I went on our first date. Three weeks later we had our first kiss. Eight weeks later I told her I loved her. Two years later I told her I was going to marry her, and made her a promise. Five years later I kept that promise. I married the most beautiful and delicate twenty five year old Irish girl in all the world.
The first three years of our marriage we spent traveling a little, but then got down to real life stuff. We bought a house. A nice two story colonial with three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a basement, a garage, and a deck out back. It had a front and rear lawn. I joined the Fairfield Police Department and Einin started a stationary and print store. She loved little artsy things like that. She loved being able to provide to people so that they could create things.
Einin was the person who got me through my mother's death, and also my fathers. It wasn't my brothers, it was Einin, she was the closest and most important person to me at the time. She still is. She had never lost anyone important to her, not her grandparents, nor parent, nor friends or even close family members, but she knew how to talk to me, how to comfort me, how to give me what I needed. To me, that is the definition of love, being everything you can be for somebody else.
She really did know how to comfort me. Four weeks after my father's passing Einin and I found out we were going to have a child. Just under nine months later, on March 22nd, we had Banning. We loved him so much, the both of us. We loved each other, we loved our family. We loved going shopping for toys, and going on picnics, and getting Banning his first puppy, the chubby little Mr. Pops, and watching movies together while Banning fell asleep between the two of us. It was a life worth having. Four years later on June 26th at the age of four years, three months, four days, six hours, and about eleven minutes Banning was killed by that car. It tore us apart, but pulled us closer than ever.
I attempted to use alcohol and my job to get through it. It was the worst thinking I had ever done. The worst idea I had ever had. The cruelest thing I could ever do. After my full breakdown, and weeks of inebriated mourning, and after going straight back to work to try and occupy my mind away from my life Einin found me, took me home, and we cried together for weeks. It wasn't just I that had lost a son, it was the both of us, and I was too selfish to instantly realize that. Not only did Einin lose a son, the first person she had ever lost, the first person ever cruelly taken from her, but she lost the person who she loved the most, me. I wasn't there for her like she was for me. I never forgave myself for that, but she forgave me. I don't know how she had it in her heart to, but the lovely thing did. It's sad to admit it, but it was the loss of Banning that reminded me how much Einin meant. How much the two of them were everything to me. How much she was everything.
A few years later, for some reason things didn't feel right between us. I had been working more for the Fairfield Police Department, longer shifts, we hadn't even talked about having another child in the past year, Einin had thought about moving her store location to another town, it was just an uneasy time in our life. When Einin told me that she wanted to separate I died inside. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know how to deal with it and went straight to work. I thought of our life so far, and of Banning, and how could it be you could love someone so much but not continually show them that you do, and show them so that they knew it. I handed out more citations in that one night than I had in any week.
It took me three days to figure out what I wanted to say. I didn't say it how I wanted to. We didn't end up separating but the next two years just dragged by with the both of us trying to love one another, but not ever really being in love. It was the worst two years of our relationship. Two long, sad years. She didn't really want to separate, she just wanted things to be better. They weren't. That's when those kids died at the intersection of Antsole Rd. and Victoria Avenue. That's the night I decided to get my life back together.
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