After

March 5th, his mom contacted me. I had just gone running with the Denver Trail Runners and was heading to dinner with them. I txt'd Scott telling him to call his mom. No response, of course.
For 10 months, I had this creepy feeling that Scott might kill himself. A part of me felt helpless - like it was inevitable.
Someone from DTR asked me where I was and I txt'd that my son was missing - maybe suicide. So before we knew, a part of me suspected.
His body was discovered Friday, March 6th. The police couldn't get hold of his mother, so they called me. At the end of my shift. From my brother's place.

I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. The police refused tot ell me over the phone, but I'd been around the block. I've seen people bleed to death, dismembered bodies, injuries, gallons of blood, burns, all sorts of gore, in my years. I knew how cops operated. I knew my son was dead before they told me.
I told the police that I would tell his mom. Since I was a wreck, I asked my brother to drive me. He drove me to her place. Oddly, she didn't act surprised to see me on Friday night - I never contact her on Friday night. But we had talked about tricking or forcing Scott to see a therapist, so she thought I was there to discuss that.
It was every bit as terrifying to tell her as I thought it would be.

Later, I walked from home to go bar-hopping by myself along Broadway. I got incredibly drunk. I remember when I was going up the 3 stairs to my front door, I lost balance and crashed into the evergreen bush.

I had a date setup for the next morning. When I cancelled that morning, she pretended it was okay, but when I told her without additional details that I was on the way to the coroner, she could tell it wasn't a flimsy excuse.

If you can't stand gore, don't look at the car photos.

Brittany was the coroner. She asked my Ex and I if we wanted Scott's clothes. We said, "no". We regretted that. So if you're in this situation, just take it all. You can throw stuff away later, but you can't throw away what you don't have.
Brittany told us where Scott's Honda Fit was, and that we could pick it up next week. Apparently, this was a mistake. We were supposed to wait for JeffCo Sheriffs to officially release it.

March 9th, we setup the cremation at the mortuary.

March 10, we had to pay hundreds of dollars to get his car out of the impound lot.

I drove it to a car wash. There must've been more than a gallon of dried blood. The impression of the muzzle of the gun was still in the seat between where his legs would have been. There was a hole in the ceiling upholstery, but no hole through. The bullet hadn't gone through the hole, and had fallen behind the driver seat where the Sheriff grabbed in for evidence.

It took a whole gallon of hydrogen peroxide to dissolve the blood. Then I unbolted the seat, removed it, and hosed it down at the car wash. I wasn't about to have a stranger clean up my son. This was personal. NOBODY was going to touch this. I'd had the news that he was dead, I had his car, but I hadn't seen him in a week, still hadn't seen the body. The blood was the only real contact I had with him, at this point. He loved his Honda Fit.

A small part of me breathed a sigh of relief, and I felt guilty about it. I was so scared something might happen, and felt so much stress over it.
I didn't feel much guilt for the first many months. How could I? I wasn't in-the-loop! Neither Scott nor his mother told me a damn thing until it was too late! But after about four months, I started to remember all sorts of things I could have/should have done differently. My parents beat me so incessantly as I grew up, from the time I was about 2 until about 12 or 13, my body was never without purple marks from beatings. My brothers and sister blamed me for everything they did, so that they wouldn't receive these overly harsh punishments. So I was beaten five times more than I should. No, more - They would beat me for doing things I didn't do, then beat me extra for lying that I didn't do them. Scott never had to put up with that. He was a good person, and we treated him with respect, without spoiling him.
He never had the reasons to die that I had, so I couldn't understand how and why he would feel so bad. I did a much better job of raising him than my parents, so I figured that was good enough. I guess it wasn't, huh?