Has anyone preserved a flower like this? It’s from our friends funeral. I have the roses hanging upside down but I’m worried this one won’t work. I sprayed it will a tad bit of hair spray and have it hanging.

Trigger warning-

On another note. I’m really having a hard time with it. He was a good friend of ours and he was my husbands boss, plus related to my husband by marriage (he and my husband shared the same aunt and uncle, my husband is related to their uncle by blood and our friend was related to their aunt my blood).

It was very sudden. He was so happy, loved being the life of the gathering, was a friend to everyone, and such a sweet soul. He left work Monday at lunch to go talk to his wife. They had been having some “issues”. He stayed the last six days at their uncles house. She said something about needing 30 days and he said it was entirely to long. That’s long enough for someone to fall out of love. And she said she didn’t know if she could do it another 9 years. So he left and went to Academy. He bought a gun, and went sit down a gravel road. He stopped smoking a year ago or so. But there was cigarette buts around the truck. So I guess he stopped to get some. He called his wife and said he was on ____rd if they wanted to find him. She called everybody to try and find him and their cousin was 3 minutes away. She found him in the woods taking his last breath. It wasn’t like him. He never joked about it or anything. And I know that he wasn’t just going to do it regardless. It was a situation where he couldn’t see past not having his family. My heart breaks for his wife and kids. Regardless of what his wife said in that moment, this isn’t what she wanted. He has a 7 year old, 6 year old and a May baby as well. He was only 28 years old.

My husband texted me and I said to my self, I’ll check after I finish these dishes. My phone was charging in the bedroom. He texted and called a few times after but I never heard it. The first message I seen was him saying I needed to call his grandma (that is their uncles sister) because he was pretty sure their uncle just called him crying saying that Kade killed him self. I called my husband and he said that he did. I asked him if he was okay and he said yeah but I heard him get emotional. He said he had to go shortly after. His uncle had called him a few minutes before looking for his boss because his wife had called everybody. But my husband didn’t know what all was going on. He just called him back and told him he wasn’t there. He got the phone call from his uncle shortly after and he had to let everyone where they work at know. I was completely hysterically after I got the call. I had just seen him, we where just at his house. How could this have happened. It tore me up. All I could see was him sitting in his truck, smoking his cigarette, listening to that song (when they found his phone, the last song he was listening to was birds by imagine dragons) then calling his wife then going do it. It hurt so much to think that he felt that was his only option. He impacted to many peoples lives for the better. He didn’t know a stranger because he made everyone feel like a friend to him. The funeral home was full of people. My husband said he probably didn’t even realize how many people cared about him.

He was my husbands best friend. It’s been hard on me but he finally talked last night about it. He said it was a hard week without him there. I asked him if he thought that he had thought about him and his uncle before he had done it (his uncle and friend where like father and son and his friend talked about my husband all the time. His dad, who we never met seen my husbands name tag and the funeral home and came up to him to meet him because he recognized his name and he said Kade spoke highly of him and his uncle said Kade really cared for my husband because he talked to him about my husband a lot, even before we realized they where related. His uncle is the one that actually put it together. He always was saying how much he liked him and we had to go to Dallas for a class and my husbands grandmother told his uncle that and Kade told his uncle he had to send someone to Dallas for school and that’s how they figured out they where working together). He said he didn’t know but Kade talked to everyone else that day but he would look at my husband. Every time my husband would ask him a question, Kade would walk off and answer him. My husband said it was frustrating because he was trying to talk to Kade and he wouldn’t look at him. He told me he wanted to ask Kade if he was alright but he didn’t want to make it weird so he didn’t. He said know he just kinda wonders if he would have asked Kade if he was alright, would he still be here. I told him he can’t think like that. Kade had this planned, for what I think was six days. I think that when she said she needed time, he started to plan that if she left him, he would do this. He went to church Sunday, I feel like maybe he was asking for forgiveness before he did it. He wasn’t attending much but he was Catholic. Kade would have probably just told him he was fine. He didn’t answer my husbands phone call or his uncles when they didn’t know where he was. He sent it to voice mail. My husbands uncle says he thinks he wouldn’t answer because he knew he could be talked out of it. My husband had no idea what was going on at that time either though. I think he called because his uncle called my husband looking for Kade. But regardless, my husband would have tried everything to talk him out of it.

We went to his uncles today and it was hard not seeing Kade there. His wife was there with their children. Our daughter and his youngest played together for a while. He wife went through things that was in his truck. They took his truck out of town for now. She didn’t want to look at it but he wanted their son to have it. I pulled up yesterday and his truck was there and it was like a nightmare. I couldn’t get out at first. I seen it play over in my head so many times and it was right in front me. It was a lot harder than I expected. His wife never really talked much to us. She kinda has anxiety and liked being by her self in the house with the baby during the cookouts but she talked to my husband today. She doesn’t really say anything to me. But besides her, my husband spent the most hours out of the day with him (our of people in the family). So I think she feels like he kinda knows how she is hurting. She asked him when I was in the other room how work was. He said it was alright it just..he didn’t have words and she said weird. And he said yeah. She started to cry and apologized and told him she didn’t mean to cry. She gave us his work pants to return because she doesn’t want to go up there.

It’s all just a hard adjustment. My husband and I laid down and talked last night and helped the both of us so much. But it was definitely hard today. We had dinner at his uncles house for the first time without Kade there. It was pretty sad. He was all we could all talk about.

I’m sorry this is so long if anyone had read it. Just needed to vent. Please send prayers and good thoughts to all of Kades family and friends. Everybody is having a rough time. He is missed by so many