Dani Bates

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It was weird how soon I knew something was off. Denny was never late to anything. He would always say, “If you’re not ten minutes early, then you’re late.” He would even get annoyed when we were first dating if I would show up late (which I did frequently) and would try to hide his frustration. He didn’t hide it well. Fun fact: I was 45 minutes late to our outdoor wedding. Not kidding, one reason I was so confident in marrying him that day is because he was still so excited and happy when I got there. He wasn’t even kind of annoyed. He was just so excited to be married to me.  But on that Friday, I knew by 8:01am something was off. Actually, I remember him leaving early in the morning, but he told me on Thursday that he was going to the gym the next morning. So I woke up just as he was leaving and rolled back over and went back to sleep. When Winnie woke me up with a Diet Coke (the only good thing about that day was her running in with a can yelling “Good Morning”) at 745...

4 weeks ago, at this moment, I was trying to remain calm. I had driven all over Utah County and asked places Denny frequented if they had seen him(Denny is hard to miss unless he’s in a crowd of tall people, then you can’t even see his head). I called his best friend, his mom, and his brother. I called his boss and a secretary from his work to tell them he may be late and to let me know the second he gets there.  Earlier that week he’d shown some signs of stress. But, if you know Denny, he gets stressed out all of the time. He would have a less than average month at work and threaten to quit (though he never actually followed through and we had this conversation 40,000 times). His best friend and I always teased him about being a bit of a Drama Queen. 95% of the time he was even keeled. But then he had that 5% that was over the top. Stressed out Denny was a familiar one.  The stress from work came because all Denny ever wanted was to protect and provide for his fami...

This is a picture from the day before his funeral when I took the girls to the mortuary. I had a hard time deciding if I would let the girls see their daddy but I just knew that’s what Denny wanted for them so I did. This may sound morbid, but the Mortuary did an amazing job and Winnie said “Daddy looks so handsome!” When we first went in though, I said, “Who is that?” Winnie said, “I don’t know.” “Yes you do, who is that?” “I don’t know!” Part of that could be because he had a massive beard when he died that I asked them to trim to his normal beard length(#sorrynotsorrydenny). But I don’t think that’s the real reason because she can look at pictures of him with any beard length and recognize him. I think Winnie knew her daddy wasn’t in there. I think she didn’t recognize his body without the amazing fun silly daddy spirit inside of it. Then we talked about how his body is here but his spirit is now in Heaven. We talked about how his body is going in a special box and we’re going to p...

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Winnie put stickers on the casket during the funeral. My sister was worried I would be upset about it as she was doing it during my talk. I loved it and told her to keep putting more on there. What a cute little tribute to Denny from his best buddy. Winnie has been doing a little bit better (despite BOTH girls having a double ear infection 🙄). She’s more social and wanting to go play. Which is good for me. I’m exhausted in every sense of the word and in every possible way. I definitely need some breaks. It’s so fun to see her smiling and happy and being her sunshine and rainbow self. She loves friends, especially girls that are older than her. But her favorite is when there is a “Daddy” there. A particularly amazing neighbor/friend has taken W every day for several days in a row for at least a few hours at a time. She says she likes to play with Brian because he’s a daddy. She wants to watch baseball and play catch with him. It’s equally sweet and heartbreaking. The daddy she insists...

This is the last picture taken of Denny. Piper has always been very attached to me, but the night before he disappeared, she was SO attached to him. He was the only other person she would go to with any sort of consistency. But that night she would not let him put her down. And I took this picture because I thought it was so cute how much she wanted him. Normally he would eat it up whenever one of the girls wanted him over me. He didn’t do that this time. He kept handing her back to me. Then she’d try crawling right off the bed to get back to him. He was stressed out and pacing the hallway while we chatted. But we were teasing each other and smiling and talking about how we can get through anything together. We talked about how much he loved his girls and how much his girls loved him. We talked about how strong he was. He expressed a lot of his inner struggles earlier on in the day and throughout the evening, but we ended the conversation well and talking about how I would help him wo...

Today is a bad day. Yesterday and today have been hard. Most days I wake up with a feeling like I can do this, but today was not one of those days. We have had way fewer visitors and were completely on our own last night and this morning. My sister moved in temporarily but has already had to move back out so we are really on our own now. We have lots of outside help, but I’m definitely feeling the real single-parent thing setting in. It’s so hard. And not only am I suddenly learning how to do all of this without my person, but Im also dealing with my girl’s healing and my own healing. Winnie has been hitting non-stop. She hits and she kicks and she throws everything and she doesn’t listen. That’s not her. She is acting out- a lot. Her personality has completely changed to antisocial and angry and sad and quiet and mean. She also clings to me and won’t go to anyone else, even those who she’s most comfortable with. Piper has been even clingier than normal too although a little bit mo...

This. I wish everyone knew how good people were. Here’s the thing... I hate being “that person”... the person on “the list.”  I know my ward (church congregation) leadership talks about me. I know my friends talk about me. I know strangers talk about me. They are so heartbroken for me for all of the things I’ve been through. I KNOW I’m one of the people at the top of “the list.” And everyone is trying to figure out how to help me. I hate this. And I feel like I’ve been on the list too many times over the last decade. I’m not even 30. And I’m constantly on the stupid list. It really is so embarrassing. I know it shouldn’t be but it is. It’s mortifying. This is obviously the worst crisis yet. Multiply the previous worst by 1000 and you’re still not there. But I have been on the list for a while. I just want so badly to be the person who helps other people. I want to be in a position where I can be going to someone’s house and cleaning and helping with their kids and bringing me...

Watch before reading: Winnie and Piper This isn’t fun for me to share. But it’s reality. I want people to see this. So i took a small video of it. This went on for a half hour yesterday at nap time. And this happens several times throughout the day. This is absolutely not normal for either of my children. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Winnie this upset at any time and now it happens on and off all day long. In the past few days she has taken chunks of skin out of my face from scratching me cause she’s mad. She has actually hurt the baby by hitting her (she has never ever ever intentionally hurt the baby before this last 11 ish days and is always so sweet to her). She has thrown things at visitors and been so mean when she is usually everyone’s bestie. Her face has broken out in acne (she’s 3 guys). If you can’t tell, Winnie is crying and screaming so much that she is hyperventilating. She kept telling me she couldn’t breathe so I held her and sang to her and helped her calm down. But af...

I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormon or LDS). This post has their resources and what they believe when it comes to suicide. The first video is exactly what I believe. 

Everyone has a lot of questions and I’m happy to answer them.  I understand people have genuine curiosity and although some think they’re being rude, I don’t. I think you just want to know. And i appreciate that. Sometimes it’s hard for me to, but I want to share as much as possible. It seems to have helped people so I’ll continue to answer questions or share my story as long as that is the case. Life Insurance: GET IT. If you don’t have it, GET IT NOW if you have any ability to do so. You never know what’s going to happen and you never want to leave your family with either no way to get daycare for your kids if you are a stay at home parent, or no way to pay the bills if you are a working one. As long as you’re relatively healthy, you can get quite a bit of insurance for not very much a month. Suicide does NOT nullify life insurance. All policies have different clauses and conditions, but the large majority just require you to have a policy for one year prior to the suicide ...

Yesterday was a very emotional day. I’m constantly up and down. I do have really good days and most of the time we can function relatively normally, but some days just suck. My girls are still sick and only want mom so it’s hard to feel like I can function at all. Winnie wants daddy too obviously but knows that isn’t happening. She keeps sobbing and saying “I want Daddy, I want Daddy, I want Daddy to hold me.” And then she always pauses for a second and says, “But daddy can’t hold me cause he’s up in heaven.” I don’t know what happens exactly when we die, but I do believe our loved ones watch over us and really are our guardian angels. I haven’t “felt” Denny as constantly lately, but I know he’s around. As I was talking with an old friend the other day, we wondered what it must be like for him. Imagine after you take your own life and you are now your loved ones guardian angel. But you can’t protect them from the emotions and consequences they are feeling and dealing with from the ...

The last few weeks have been the hardest of my life. But that doesn’t mean I’m just on the floor sobbing 24/7. I think people come over and expect me to be a disaster. Which would be totally acceptable if I was, but I’m usually not. I have had those moments for SURE. Many of them. I’ve had moments of ALL of the feelings. Anger to Peace and everything in between. But the most helpful thing in my healing is laughing and talking about Denny. We do a LOT of laughing. Denny had the best sense of humor and made me laugh even when I didn’t want to. Right after my mom died he vowed to stop making “Your Mom” jokes for a while so every time he would have been making one, I would just start laughing cause I could see his brain trying so hard to stop it from coming out of his mouth. Just a month or two ago, he got really excited that there was a sale on tampons at smiths and came home one day with his arms full of tampon boxes looking so proud of himself. He told me how Winnie was yelling “WHERE A...

Watch This First I keep saying Denny was the BEST dad. And I’m not just saying that. He actually was. I always told him this, but now I can brag about it on social media all I want. He was there for almost every doctors appt. Whether it was a “well check” or a visit because of a fever, he would go with us or meet us there. If a baby was sick he would do everything in his power to come home early or take off work. He hated seeing the people he loved in pain. Especially me and the two girls. If Winnie just wanted to be held all day, he would sit and snuggle her and watch whatever movie she wanted for as long as she needed to rest (even Barbie). He was taking two hard core medications that suppress your immune system (Crohn’s) but he never seemed to get sick. So he was always taking care of the rest of us. Winnie was coughing all night last night and Piper started this morning. They both have Croup with Stridor. Most kids get Croup at some point I think. It’s not that big of a deal. B...

Lets talk about the phrase “committed suicide.” It’s the most common phrase people use when talking to me about suicide. But why do we say “committed?” It’s not a sin. You are not sent straight to hell. I did a super scientific (jk 🤓) poll on my Instagram the other day and 76% of 118 people said that they had been taught these things at some point in their life. As a leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Elder Renlund) says, “There is an old sectarian notion that suicide is a sin and that someone who commits suicide is banished to hell forever. That is totally false. I believe the vast majority of cases will find that these individuals have lived heroic lives and that suicide will not be a defining characteristic of their eternities.” No matter what belief system you have, we have to get rid of this idea that suicide is selfish. It’s still not the RIGHT thing to do, right? We would take Denny back over anything and wish so so so deeply that he didn’t make this...

This is when it starts to get really hard. I knew this was coming, but it’s 1000 times harder now than it was after my mom died. It’s been two weeks today since they found Denny and since the cops had to knock on my door and tell me what happened. I still get that sick feeling in my stomach just thinking about it and it’s so consuming. Now is when everyone else’s lives go back to normal. I mean, his friends and family miss him of course. Deeply. It’s painful for all of us who loved him. But every single second of my life has changed. Everyone else’s routines stay the same. Everything about mine is different. Everything. Every second is a reminder that Denny left us. Just doing laundry is painful for me... it’s so dumb but it makes it so real when I’m not washing his gross gym clothes... everything is a reminder. I can’t use the restroom without realizing he’s not there to watch the kids. I cant get into my car without thinking about him buying me a minivan and working so hard to ...

I wish he could take back the one decision that is impossible to take back. Everything else is fixable. Life is hard and depression sucks. But I promise you can do it. You are strong enough. Seek out help. He could have done it. He was strong. I’m broken. I miss him. Please don’t allow yourself to make a decision that will break so many even if it seems like the only logical choice at the time. Please don’t allow yourself to get to that point. The only one who knows what is going on in your head is you. No one can help you if you don’t tell someone. But people want to help. People do love you. YOU ARE NOT A BURDEN. YOU ARE NOT A HASSLE. YOU ARE NEEDED. Stop this trend. Stop the chain. Talk about it. Please do not do this. Original Post

I’ve been trying to calm a hyperventilating Winnie for about a half hour now and it’s not yet 5am. The night before, Piper was a disaster and screaming all night long. This is the reality of suicide. This is what happens when their father goes missing all of a sudden and shows back up in a casket. Never ever ever in a million years would Denny have done this if he were in the right mind. Never. Look at the suffering my babies are going through. It is very apparent. Look at what I’m going through. I’m just so tired. Emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually... I’m sure the girls are too. They also both end up in bed with me after only a few hours each night so it doesn’t help with the whole sleep thing.  How are my girls? Not good. They had a good day or two this week but the rest of the time has had much more downs than ups. Not many ups at all. When people come over to visit, Winnie often just stays in her room. Normally she’s the child who runs out the second some...

It’s weird how you can have ten thousand feelings going on at once but still feel numb somehow too. I don’t know how to explain it but I’m sure those of you who have suffered a loss will understand to an extent. I don’t think there are many things that are more traumatic than losing your spouse or significant other to suicide, especially when you have babies. There are definitely a small handful of things out there that could be as traumatic or more traumatic. But I don’t want to say/type any of them out loud because I keep saying, “Well, it can’t get worse than that,” and then it does. That’s just kinda how the last decade or so of my life has been.  I’m not mad at God. I’m not mad at humanity. Or society. But I definitely am annoyed by God. And I think that’s okay to say. It sucks. It really does. But it is what it is and I am here now. Just would love s ten minute break sometime.  People keep saying how I’m so strong or brave or handling this so well. None of that ...