The Voicemail That Changed My Life: Part 1

Follow me as I take you through the journey of what I believe to be an incredible story.  Writing this actually terrifies me.  Sharing it with the world terrifies me even more.  There are some memories I’ve worked incredibly hard to suppress and forget.  In Dan’s case, he’s had a hard time remembering some things, and an even harder time forgetting the things he’d rather forget.

But this story needs to be told. 

The information shared in this story is true, recounted from the best of my/our memory and from the emotions behind the experiences.  Our interpretation of the truth could very well differ from others, as there is always two sides to every story.  I have reconstructed dialogue from memory, which means it may not be written word for word.  But the essence of what was said (or experienced) is accurate.

This blog has only given you a glimpse of what we’ve been through, where we’ve been and how we’ve gotten to where we are today.  The final chapter of our book remains to be seen.

Your feedback as I write this story is greatly appreciated:  Good, bad or otherwise.  Be gentle, but be honest.  I will only share the first few chapters for your viewing pleasure and cut-throat criticism.  After that, you’ll just have to buy the book to find out what happened next.

After these first few chapters, I may even share how the publishing process works as I go through each step.  This way you can learn how to share your own story too.  I believe we all have a story inside us that is screaming to get out.

BONUS:  Notification of any typos, poor sentence structure, improper punctuation and a critique of my writing style will grant you even more appreciation.  You may even get a mention in my book when it is finally published. 

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November 14, 2004 – Jacksonville, Florida

Finally, a day off.

I vaguely remember David kissing me before the sun rose, making sure not to disturb me as he quietly left my apartment.  He knew how much I needed my sleep on my days off.  As I let the warmth of his tender kiss wash through me, I drifted back to sleep with a smile on my face. You have the day off, I remind myself.  A glorious day off.  Knowing that I could sleep in made me drift back into my slumber in a more heavenly way.

It wasn’t long before my cell phone ringtone illuminated the air with painful sound waves reverberating in my ears, thus breaking the silence and my sanity.  I forced my eyes open to look at the clock.  It was 6:30 am.

Why in the hell was my cell phone ringing so early on a Sunday morning?  Who would have the audacity to call me at such an ungodly hour?  God, can’t I just get ONE day off?

It rang exactly four times…just enough to lull me out of my sleep.  I reached for it just as it stopped short on the very last ring.

Shit!  I groaned and let my arm collapse mid-air.  Not only am I awake now, but I missed the call. 

Part of me wanted to go back to sleep.  Part of me was certain it was a wrong number.  Part of me wanted so badly to catch the call in time so I could properly cuss out whoever was bothering me.

“I’ll give them two minutes to call back before I close my eyes again…” I bargained with myself.

As I blink repeatedly to force my eyes to stay engaged, I debated whether to reach for the phone on the nightstand again to view the caller ID, just to be sure it wasn’t David.  I was so tired that my arm felt like it was three times its normal weight.  My arm dropped again as I groaned in imaginary pain.  No, I knew it couldn’t be David.  He would have called one more time if it were an emergency.

I knew it couldn’t be the office trying to call.  They were closed on Sunday.  So who could it be?

God, I am just so tired.  Please let me go back to sleep.  I let my eyes close and prayed for the sweet slumber I needed so much.

Work was killing me even though I loved my job.  The truth is, I was just thankful to have a job, let alone a good paying one.  Having this job meant my days of sleeping on the cafeteria floor of an inner-city homeless shelter were finally behind me. Having this job meant I could finally make the new life I set out to make.  I was pretty proud of the fact I could stand on my own two feet, despite the unfortunate hiccup with my stint in the homeless shelter.  David had his place and I had mine.  We sometimes intermingled the two, but there was a very definite line in the sand when it came to living together.  As long as I had my job, I had my freedom.

The previous year really sucked.  The company I worked for was downsizing right as my landlord decided to sell the house I was renting.  Up until then, we had an agreement where I would pay half the rent on the 1st and half the rent on the 15th, which coincided with my incoming child support payments.  However, my lease said it was all due on the first of the month.  As such, the landlord had a loophole in evicting me for being ‘behind’ on my rent instead of honoring the 60-day stay if the house was sold.

I had 24 hours to get out of the house… all in the very same week my job ended.  The judge didn’t give a goddamn that I had no place to go.  The law is the law.  If you are behind for even $1 in rent in the state of Florida, you’re fucked.

David kept telling me he’d pay my way so I wouldn’t have to work, to move in with him, but I loved my independence and my pride kept me from accepting the offer.  It wasn’t the first time a man had promised me the world.  I’ve had so many offers to be a kept woman over the years, especially during the heyday of my modeling career, but living the life of a military wife suited me best.  I was independent and could handle whatever came my way.  For ten years I handled whatever came my way.

And boy did it come my way.  It just kept coming, and coming and coming.  Living a life of a military wife was the hardest thing I had ever done.

I swore to myself and to anyone within earshot that I would be damned if I ever had to rely on another man again.  After my divorce from Dan the year before, I couldn’t bear to put my children through something like that again.  They missed their Dad.  He missed them too.  They were used to him being gone for training and deployments, but they weren’t used to Mommy and Daddy not being together when he was home.

The three boys adored David and David was good to them and adored them too, but it just wasn’t the same.

Dan had left for his tour in Korea the day after our divorce was final.  It was a brutal divorce, full of hate, control issues, deep hurt and anger.  He would call every few months to talk to the boys, but international cell phone calls were expensive.  He didn’t have much left for anything else than his necessities after paying his child support each month.  The phone calls were a luxury.

It took everything we had to refrain from arguing with each other when he called.  It was not only a waste of precious cell phone minutes, but it also went against everything we swore we would do to show the boys that their mother and father loved them enough not to fight any more.  They had seen enough of that over the years.  We had to become friends for the sake of the kids.

I had done a great job by not denigrating their father out of my own sense of frustration and hurt.  Their father was half of who my children were.  They didn’t deserve that.  They needed to know that both of their parents loved them and that neither parent was a ‘bad guy’.  To Dan’s credit, he was always a good father to his children.

Ironically enough, it was the loss of being friends and our inability to communicate that drove our marriage into divorce court.  Yet, by living on two different continents, we had to learn how to communicate effectively so we could co-parent the kids.  In order to do that, we had to learn to be friends again.  Now that the divorce was final it became easier to do.

God has a sick sense of humor.

The last time they saw their father was in early spring, though early spring in Florida was like summertime in Hell more than anything.  I hated living in Florida with a passion, but that was where my parents lived.  I returned to Florida to get a new life started only to find my parents were not much help in providing the support I needed.  Instead of living under their roof, I lived a few miles away in a homeless shelter.  They did not approve of my 6′ 11″ African-American boyfriend.  They would much rather see me sleep on a cafeteria floor in a homeless shelter than to bring in their daughter who dated outside of her race, if only for the sake of the grandchildren.  I confronted them about it but they denied it had anything to do with David or his race.  I didn’t believe them.

The relationship with my parents was clearly strained.  I loved them and I am certain they loved me, but we just didn’t see eye-to-eye on many things.  Especially when it came to my choice of men.  They wanted nothing more than to see the divorce go through, even paying for my attorney to insure and secure the deal.  I hated being indebted to them.  It seemed to me it was a way for them to control my every move, as if I owed them for more than just money.  Their old-school ways truly erupted before our divorce was final.  They couldn’t believe I would date a man before a judge set me free.  The words “whore” stung inside me long after they were spoken.

My boys and David were my only sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Dan was in Korea on an 18-month hardship tour.  Twelve months into his duty station at Camp Casey, he volunteered to go to Iraq.  As a result, he got two weeks of leave before shipping out.  He came to visit the kids, driving from Seattle to Jacksonville in a record-breaking trip of only two days.

My parents were certain that he was coming to kill us all and get revenge, being the trained sniper that he was. I knew better.  He may be my ex husband, but he is a protector by nature.  Still, I couldn’t convince my father to put his snub-nose pistol back in the lock box when Dan pulled up at my parents house to meet us.  He kept it beside him in his seat cushion, concealed.

I didn’t warn Dan about David’s stature or skin color.  God bless his heart, it didn’t even matter to him.  He looked David up and down to assess the package and stepped forward to shake his hand.

“Wow, you sure are a big guy!  Are you a basketball player?” he asked.

“Used to be.  I played the international circuit.  I am a desk jockey now.”  David replied matter-of-factly.  He got that question a lot.

“It’s very nice to meet you, David.  I hear good things about you.  Thank you for being good to my children and to Torrey.”  Dan smiled his infectious smile and put everyone at ease.  Everyone except my parents, that is.

I didn’t want any drama and we were off to a good start in getting along, so I planned a quick exit from my parents home.  The boys were so excited to see their Daddy that they could hardly contain themselves.  They loved their Daddy’s new truck and begged to ride with him.

“You guys sure are excited to see your Daddy, aren’t you?“  I laughed as a way of teasing them more.  I winked and went on to explain, “I am SURE your Dad would love for you to ride with him.  Let’s go pick out his hotel room together.  David and I will follow you guys in my car, okay?”  They squealed with excitement.  When it came time to load up in their seats, 3-year-old Drake didn’t want his Daddy to let go long enough to buckle him in.  With a little coaxing, we got him to agree to let his Daddy sit in the seat in front of him so he could drive to the hotel that had a swimming pool.  The promise of swimming with his Daddy made him let loose long enough for the trip.

We left out and got Dan settled into his hotel room in a central location between my work and the kid’s school (and making sure it had a good swimming pool!).  Dan’s hotel room became our command center.  We sat down together and set the plans for the next two weeks.  It was amicable, for which I was thankful.  I could see how much Dan missed his boys.  I was glad he and David got along.

Dan gave every available minute he had to the kids during his stay, even giving me his two-thumbs-up seal of approval of David after our group dinner together.  When his time came to an end, he returned back for a two-day cross-country marathon of driving in order to catch his plane to Korea on time.  The last day was hard for all of us, especially little Drake.  It broke my heart to see the boys crying, but seeing Dan cry was even harder for me to deal with.

He was never known to cry.  I knew he was afraid it would be the last time he’d see his boys.

Part of me was terrified that it would be the last time I would see him again, too.  This fear wasn’t so much for me, but for the boys.  Even during our divorce I never wished him dead.  With as many casualties as there were in Iraq, knowing he was going to be on the front lines meant his risk was inevitable.  I felt like I was sending him off to die, alone.  I choked back my tears as David hugged me to say, “it will be okay.”  Dan drove off and I held my crying boys for as long as their tears would flow.

Dan’s only stop was in Cordell, Oklahoma to attend a funeral.  His entire family was from that area and the matriarch of the Shannon Clan had finally passed after a long life.  He stayed for four hours, just long enough to give his respects, get a bite to eat and sleep for about two hours.  He even found a few minutes to call me and thank me for letting him see the boys and for having the chance to meet the man who would have a direct impact on his own children.

No one is humanly capable of driving coast-to-coast in two days, but no one in their right mind would volunteer to go to Iraq, either.  That was the kind of soldier Dan was; he was unstoppable and he loved his country.  He had served almost 16 years active duty and 23 years overall in the Army by that point, both as an officer and enlisted.  At one point he was both an officer and enlisted.  He was either “First Lieutenant Shannon” or “Staff Sergeant Shannon” depending on who you talked to.  The Department of Defense rarely allowed their service members to be dual component, but Dan’s Army career wasn’t your typical kind of Army career.  Nine years in sniper operations put him in a different category altogether.  He made a name for himself back in the 1980′s, graduating top in his class at sniper school.  After four years at Fort Ord he went back to college.  In 1993 he went to Officer Basic Course in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  In 1997 he found himself on inactive reserves as an artillery officer, miserable in the civilian sector.  I sat him down and said, “Go back in.  You are dying slowly.  I can see how much you miss being a grunt.”

He drove out to Fort Campbell, Kentucky and submitted his training records.  A Brigade Command Sergeant Major took a double take as Dan sat in his waiting room, invited him in, looked over his packet and exclaimed, “I thought I knew you!  You are Sergeant Shannon from Fort Ord California back in the 1980′s!”  Dan responded very matter-of-factly, “Yes sir, that’s me.  If I can get a sniper slot, I will re-enlist right now.”  The Command Sergeant Major lit up, “Hell yeah you can come back.”  He called in a Specialist from down the hall and ordered him to write a letter of acceptance, effective immediately.  “Welcome back to the Army!”  Without having to go back through boot camp, Dan re-enlisted, essentially trading in his officer’s uniform to become an E-3, which in Army-speak means Private First Class, the third lowest rank for enlisted personnel, and reported to the MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Five days later he was standing in formation in Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne Division.  He went from E-3 to E-5 (sergeant) in less than 10 months.  He was old enough to be the father of the men he lead and trained, but he was happy being a Scout/Sniper again.  He taught them things they never would have learned in the culture of the new Army.  Everyone looked up to him.

He was always a natural bad-ass.

Dan came from a long line of military service, dating back in every generation to the Revolutionary War.  It was in his blood to serve his country.  His father was in the Navy and a few of his uncles (one of which was a POW) served in Vietnam.  His grandfather served in World War II and was awarded three Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars.  Dan went on to take care of his 100% disabled grandfather until the day he died, just a few months before he and I met.

When I met him in October 1992 he was a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach studying Aerospace Engineering.  I was going to the community college across the street.  We met on a blind date, a result of a triple-dog dare by my housemates at the local battered women’s shelter.  I had a small baby to take care of and was a full time student with a dream to go to law school.  I didn’t have time to date, nor an inclination.  I ended up spending more time at the battered women’s shelter than I did with my now-ex husband.  I was the ‘house mother’ at the shelter because I was the most responsible one, even at the young age of 22.  The girls I lived with said I needed to get out for a change — and what a better way to do it than to have someone else pay?  I was too poor for any other option.  They nagged me weekend after weekend while I stayed behind to babysit their kids.  Finally, I got tired of the nagging.

I begrudgingly placed an ad in the personals of the newspaper.  This was long before the Internet came along.  I tried to put the cockiest ad imaginable so no one would respond.  As long as I kept it under the 5-line limit, I could say anything I wanted.  It was free  for women to place an ad, after all.

To my surprise and disbelief, I had enough return calls in my mailbox to have a free dinner with a different man for each day of the month.  The first caller, however, really stood out.  I surmised that being the first caller he was either one of two things:  desperate… or an early riser.  I called him back.  I didn’t call any of the others.

I found out he was an early riser due to his military ways and he was certainly far from desperate.  Hanging out with ‘the guys’ in bars was getting old.  He just wasn’t into the bar scene at all.  He explained how he wanted someone to hang out with that didn’t have facial hair, that would allow him to open doors and possibly kiss him goodnight.

We talked for a month before I agreed to finally meet him in person.  I was in love with him by that point, but meeting face-to-face really sealed the deal.

He arrived for our date on the black Kawasaki Ninja ZX-11 motorcycle he told me he owned, and I stepped off the curb to meet him in the black dress I promised I would be wearing.  He about wrecked his motorcycle when I stepped off the curb, realizing I was his date.  He stopped the bike, took off his helmet and gave me the biggest grin I have ever seen on a man in my entire life.

Over a shared bloomin’ onion, my Alice Springs Chicken and his three-course sirloin steak dinner at the Outback Steakhouse, I learned that we had crossed paths many times.  He thought I bore a striking resemblance to someone he’d seen before, but just couldn’t quite place my face.  Later we talked about where we worked.  He shared his list of college jobs, but three of them turned out to be a weird coincidence.  All three of his jobs related to places I had been at the exact same time, and two of mine were in places that were within a block of where he was at the exact same time.  Both of our jobs happened to be right across the street from each other.

I told him about my modeling projects, one of which was for the biggest car show in the Southeast.  I was the poster girl and titled as Queen of the show that year.  Come to find out, he was working at the Daytona International Speedway the day I did the photo shoot for that car event.  He described my yellow bikini in exact detail, and the car that I was posing next to. He said that all the guys stopped working just to watch from a distance.  Yep, that was me!  I explained.

He later worked at the Hawaiian Tropic plant where they manufactured and bottled the suntan oil and lotions.  Come to find out, I slathered that product on while laying out on the deck of Ron Rice’s house, the owner of Hawaiian Tropic.  I was a model for them, too.  He later got a job working for a security company.  The guys at work would all fight over who got to go to Ron Rice’s house for service calls.  There were always Hawaiian Tropic models hanging around.  I was one of them.

Those are just the small coincidences.  The real coincidences come with really cool stories:

I had two jobs, one was full time at Walgreens in Holly Hill as a pharmacy technician, just a few blocks from where Dan lived.  I had seen him ride by on his motorcycle many times, but his face was obscured by his full-face helmet. I can’t tell you how many times we passed each other on the road.  I always wondered who that hot guy was on the motorcycle.

The other job I had was a part-time job at a pharmacy on Orange Avenue in Daytona Beach.  What’s amazing about that job is it was right across the street from where Dan had been working full-time, at a place called Security One, for the last two years.  He told me that when it was quitting time, the guys at Security One would go to their front window and watch as my co-worker, Kendall, would walk to her car.  She was a tall and voluptuous woman, turning heads no matter where she went.  As the guys would “ooooh” and “aaahhh” secretly as she crossed the parking lot and drove away, Dan was pointing to my short little figure coming out behind her and saying “Hey guys…now THAT is a woman!” and continue watching me as I walked out to my car.  He liked petite women, and back then I was definitely petite.  He debated on walking across the street to ask me out on a date but chickened out.  He wasn’t that type.  He was painfully shy.  I told him over dinner that it was a good thing he didn’t try to ask me out because I probably would have said NO.

He about choked on his food when he heard me say that, thinking I was rejecting him in the here-and-now.  I told him that it must have been fate that we were sitting together at that moment and in that place.  We must have been destined to be together.

As if to guarantee we’d see each other again, he ‘accidentally’ left his motorcycle gloves in my car.  At the end of the night he asked permission for ‘one soft kiss’.  I quivered in anticipation.  He gave me the softest, most sensual, gentlest kiss I had ever had in my life.  I knew he was the one for me.

Months later, he knew I was the one for him when we took a day to ride his motorcycle up A1A to St. Augustine.  On the way back we hit a long stretch of road that was straight as an arrow and free of cars.  He pulled over and asked permission to ‘kick it up a notch’.  I was thrilled!  As soon as we exceeded 150 mph, I started slapping his leg as we raced down the road.  He immediately pulled over and before his helmet was off, he was apologizing for going so fast and for scaring me.

I told him, “You didn’t scare me!  I was hitting your leg because I wanted you to go faster!  Like you would do on a horse!”

He said that was the very moment he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life together with me.

We married on November 23, 1993.  He adopted that little baby of mine, we had another and then we had another.  After many moves with the military, his duty station in Oregon did us in.  We divorced on July 14, 2003.  We made it just shy of ten years together.

And here he was, volunteering to serve in this awful war.  As much as his military duty put a strain on our marriage, ultimately ruining it in the end, I was still proud of him for his service.

Once he got to Iraq he was the Senior Sniper of the Ghost Recon Platoon in the 1/503rd Infantry.  The kids idolized their Daddy because he was in charge of the platoon that bore the same name as the video game they played.  He was larger than life in their eyes.

I kept a photo of Dan on my desk at work, right next to David’s picture.  David asked me one day, “Why do you have his picture on your desk?”  He seemed hurt over the fact, but I just told him the truth:  “He’s the father of my three boys.  I may not be married to him, but he is a part of my life.  I am proud that he is serving our country.  But that chapter between us is closed, David.  It’s closed.”  I honestly had no intention of going down that road again, with Dan or with anyone else.

Just as I started to drift back to sleep, the cell phone signaled that I had a voicemail.  I reached over to flip open the phone and noticed the call came from a 703 area code.  I don’t know anyone with a 703 area code.  Where is that area code anyway?  I think to myself.

I sigh and dial into my mailbox.  A commanding voice met me on the other side of the call.

“Mrs. Shannon, this is….First Sergeant…”  I yawn.  I didn’t hear much of what he was saying because I was still trying to wake up.  Then I hear bits of his voice.  It was like I could only hear every other word.  By then it was not from being tired.  It was from shock.

“I am calling from….office in…..Washington DC….Department of the Army….Casualty Affairs….we need to speak to you….please call me back…it is urgent….the number is….”

I dropped the phone and collapsed to my knees.  “Oh my GOD.  OH MY GOD!” I said out loud.  I couldn’t find air to breathe.  My chest became heavy, my pulse racing.  I wanted to pass out.  I was paralyzed on the floor.  The only thing that was racing as fast as my heart was my brain.  “They are supposed to come to my door if anything happened.  Why were they leaving me a voicemail?  I take a breath as best I can, but I feel like the room is spinning.  The tears start to swell up in my eyes, stinging me like needles.  Oh MY GOD!  I bet it is because they couldn’t find me because I moved!  Please God, NO!  My life with him flashed before my eyes.  I remember the look on his face when he had to leave to go back to put his boots on the ground in the warzone.  I told him softly as I kissed his cheek goodbye, “Come back alive.”  He promised he would.

“Oh my God…..Dan must be dead.  What am I going to do, God?  How could you do this to us?  How am I going to tell our boys?”

I reached for the phone on the floor and could hardly control how badly my hands were shaking.  I tried to redial my voicemail to hear it one more time.  Surely this had to be a joke.  Surely I only heard bits and pieces and he’s just fine.  Surely the voicemail will say something different if I listen to it again.

It took a few tries to dial my voicemail.  Even on speed dial, my hands could not stop shaking enough and my brain could not stop panicking enough.

The voicemail remained the same.  All of a sudden, the tears stopped.  The shock set in.  I felt numb.  I forced myself to get up and go to the boys rooms.  They were sleeping so soundly.  How was I going to tell them that they lost the person they loved so dearly and missed so dearly?  Their cherubic faces peeked out of the blankets, unaware of the frantic mess their mother was in.

Slowly and carefully, I dial back to a 703 number.  One digit at a time, as if to delay the connection, but careful enough not to mis-dial.  Time stood still and everything was in slow motion.  Even my heartbeat seemed to be suspended in time.

Bump bump…bump bump….bump…bump…….bump……bump………bump………..bump.  It was flooding my ears with the sound of each whoosh.  Each ring that went unanswered seemed like an eternity to me.

Finally someone picked up.  “Casualty Affairs Office, this is First Sergeant…” I cut him off before I could even get his name.  I wanted to know what was going on and I wanted to know NOW.

“This is Torrey Shannon.  You just left a voicemail on my cell phone.  Is Staff Sergeant Shannon okay?  PLEASE tell me he is okay?”  Inside I was holding a conversation with myself, trying to stay calm.  Be strong Torrey.  The boys will hear you if you break down.  Be strong. 

Oh, yes.  Thank you for calling me back.  Give me just a second, I have to find the notice.  I could hear the First Sergeant shuffling papers in the background.

What do you mean you have to find the notice?  You mean to tell me you don’t know if he is dead or alive?  How many notices are there anyway?

The First Sergeant mumbled about ‘being busy’ and ‘sorry for the wait.’  Just as I felt like reaching through the phone to strangle him for taking so long, he breaks in with this:

“Mrs. Shannon, when was the last time you talked to your husband?”

Oh dear God.  This must mean he is dead….but maybe, just maybe, it meant he was still alive.

I didn’t know what to think, so I became an gibbering idiot.

“Actually, it was the night before last.  It was already morning for him and he had emailed to say the check he sent for child support had been returned to him with “return to sender” on it.  He was upset to know the payment was delayed and promised to send it back out again to my new address.  He didn’t have much time to talk, he was on his way out on a mission, but he said we should look forward to his envelope with more letters inside.”  I ramble when I am nervous or upset, so my mouth started taking over.  “He and I talked every three to four weeks, usually by email.  Due to OpSec, all I know is he was continually on missions, attached to multiple units, getting about 4 hours of downtime between missions.  No news was always good news.  You calling here means you don’t have good news, am I right?”

“Are you aware of your husband’s exact location in Iraq, Mrs. Shannon?”

I took a deep breath.  This is taking too long, I think.  Why do they need to ask me all these questions?  Why do they think I am still married to him?  I am his next of kin, but not his wife.  The thoughts kept racing and none of it made any sense to me.  I just wanted to scream “JUST TELL ME!”

So I did.

And that is when he finally told me.

(to be continued)

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