A little over two years ago, shortly after my wife's father passed away after a too short battle with an aggressive bladder cancer, my wife, Mary and I moved into an RV (Alliance Avenue 32RLS) full time to start roaming the country while we worked remotely. The goal was to not play the "Someday when we retire" game, after watching both of our parents and grandparents talk about all the big plans of things they'd do, "Someday..." Up front, our agreement was to do this for at least one year, with a discussion halfway through so that we could make appropriate plans for moving forward.
From June to October, we traveled from Washington, through Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas, into Texas. Along the way, we visited the dam at the top of Hell's Canyon, the Idaho Potato Museum, saw the Snake River Stampede Rodeo, spent time boating at Flaming Gorge, visited a wild horse sanctuary in Wyoming, and reconnected with old friends and family along the way. October and November saw us go from Lake Texhoma, to the NRVTA outside Athens, Waxahachie, Austin, landing at the end of November just outside San Antonio.
San Antonio was our 6 month mark - the timeframe we'd agreed on to re-visit the decision to get in the RV. Are we enjoying the run? Is this something we can see ourselves continuing to do? Is this rig the right one to continue in, or do we want to look at making a change? We met up and reconnected with more old friends, had a date night to see the Christmas lights at the Alamo, and start that discussion over dinner. Neither of us was thinking of anything but continuing the run, we loved our rig, but were thinking maybe in 4 or 5 years, moving into a Class A might be reasonable.
Two days later, while I was working at the dinette in the rig, Mary took our dog Titus for a walk. She collapsed at the front of the trailer - a pulmonary embolism - and passed away in the ambulance before they could pull out of the park. My world collapsed with her. We were supposed to fly out, back to Seattle for Christmas with her sister and brother-in-law, in two days. I cancelled the flights, loaded Titus in the truck, and drove to Seattle over three days. During that drive, I kept reaching for her hand, kept trying to point out things I was seeing that I knew she'd want to not miss - only to remember that she wasn't there.
I stayed with Katie and Alex for about two weeks, making the drive back to San Antonio over another three days, getting back to the rig just in time for New Years. I was *NOT* in a good place, running largely on auto-pilot, just trying to maintain forward motion. I'm reasonably certain that the daily calls, texts, emails, and meme-spamming from Katie and Alex were a kind of covert suicide watch, but they were kind enough to not directly call it out... although I'm also reasonably certain that the phrase "I'm having no thoughts of self-harm..." made it's way into most of those conversations.
The long and the short of it was - I needed help. I'm sure a lot of you are aware that among men of a certain age, there's a shame and stigma attached to asking for help. Globally, we lose men to suicide at a rate of one per minute because we're too ashamed to ask for help, because we don't want to be a burden on our loved ones, because we don't know how or who to ask, or because we don't know how to receive help when it's offered. I had support from Katie and Alex, and from my mother and my sister; I joined a couple of online communities and got involved with people that were willing to listen when I needed them to, or to just sit silently with when that was what I needed. I also got in touch with a therapist through Betterhelp.org.
Things were going pretty well, I was following the routing we'd put together for 2023; got a slot for the Alliance RV Rally in Elkhart that was on Mary's list of "Things we must do". Of course, that's when the rug got pulled out from under me again. My last living grandparent passed away. I left the rig in Mississippi to run back to Kansas to see everyone, and the day after I got back, got word from my employer that the recent round of layoff's were impacting me - I had 90 days until my contract ended, and as a contractor, no severance package would be offered.
I leaned into the resources I'd lined up and managed to keep myself upright. In 30 days, I lined up a new position with a great company. I wrapped up the route Mary had planned for us in July, up near Niagara Falls. I'd come to the realization by then that, as great as the full-time RV life was for us - it wasn't a good place for me; not at that point, and not in that rig. I'd chosen my landing spot in Conroe, TX, just north of Houston; I'd signed a lease for an apartment sight unseen, starting in August 2023.
Over the next few months, I got settled into the apartment, started attending some local Meetups, made some fantastic new friends. Thanks to the support I had in place, I'm in a fantastic place these days.