A Survivor's Tale: Jennifer Geise

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown in December, the nation reeled at the idea of a parent putting a child on a school bus in the morning, and that child never coming home again. The idea of a normal life being so horrifically torn apart hit many hard.

Jennifer Geise of Mystic could relate. On Jan. 28, 2007, with a knock on her front door, her life was blown apart. Six years later, she still struggles to make sense of her ‘new normal.’ When she talks about what happened to her, her two children, their life, even after all that time, the tears come fast.

John was supposed to be home at 2, 2:30. But sometimes he would fall asleep on the couch. I woke up at 5 and went downstairs and he wasn’t there. I called the casino and they said he had left. I called his cell and left him a message. He never stayed out, he never drank, but you just don’t think that way. You don’t go there. So I went back to bed and fell back asleep. There was a knock on the door at 7 a.m. I remember walking down the stairs, and we have these windows along the top of the door and from the stairs I could see out the windows that it was two police officers. So I opened the door and I said, ‘Just tell me. Is he dead?’

John Geise had, in fact, left work at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard when his butler shift ended, and had been driving home. He hadn’t stayed out, except that he waited an extra hour at the casino for his colleague Wayne Lecardo, who needed a ride home. He hadn’t been drinking. But someone else had.

After a lengthy investigation, Groton Police determined that 16-year-old Cameron Lee was intoxicated and driving his father’s car at more than 100 mph on Flanders Road in Groton in the early hours of Jan. 28, 2007, when he crossed the center line and struck the car being driven by John Geise. Lee, Geise, and Geise’s passenger, Wayne Lecardo of Groton Long Point, all died at the scene. Lee’s passenger, 16-year-old Nelson Panganiban, survived.

Geise was 52, and survived by his wife Jennifer, his 7-year-old son Jack, and his 5-year-old daughter Hope. Lecardo was 33, and left a wife.

When Jen Geise went to bed on the night of Jan. 27, 2007, she was a wife and stay-at-home mom. When she woke up the morning of Jan. 28, she was a widow and a single parent. That was her ‘new normal.’ Just like that.

That first year, you live off adrenaline. That’s all you have. You just react. It’s still not really real, but you still have the kids, and they still have school, and you need to feed them and clothe them and give them morals and teach them values. There are still things that need to be done. The first year, you just survived.

Even as young as they were, Geise’s children were remarkably sensitive to the situation. There were days when it all just became too much, she recalls, and she would tell the kids she was going upstairs for a half hour, and they could watch Spongebob. She would lie in her bed and cry for that full 30 minutes, and all the while she could hear Jack downstairs, taking care of Hope, getting her a snack or a drink, playing with her. When the 30 minutes were done, Geise would go back downstairs.

You think the first year is bad? The second year’s worse. Because suddenly you realize, this is my life. He really is gone. This is my life. Every form you fill out for school, it says who is your emergency contact? Who is mine? I am the mother and the father.

Rather than give in to the sadness and the anger and the fear, Geise found herself motivated. She studied and then converted to Catholicism, which had been her husband’s religion. She helped form a young widows support group at her children’s elementary school, where in the space of about two years a significant number of women lost their spouses. Geise was the only one who had lost a spouse to an accident.

She knew her kids needed extra help too, and she found The Cove, an organization geared solely toward helping grieving children. For two years she drove them to Guilford once a week.

My mother said to me, ‘I don’t know how you do it, how you get up every day.’ But if I didn’t, what gets accomplished? Nothing. John and I always said our number one job was to keep them safe and to raise them to be productive members of society. If I lay in bed with the covers over my head, I’m not doing what I need to do as a parent. That’s what drives me.

Geise was raised outside of Atlanta, Ga. and graduated from Skidmore College. She then received a degree in nursing from Johns Hopkins University, but she had put her career on hold to raise her children. In addition to buterling at Foxwoods, John sold real estate. They were married for 10 years, and had dated for six years before that.

She has gone back to school to get a master’s degree so she can teach nursing. Jack is a freshman at Stonington High and Hope is in middle school. They play sports and take vacations. Jen has a boyfriend. Life has gone on.

They don’t tell people their dad’s dead, because then people will feel sorry for you. Everyone grieves in their own way. We talk about John all the time. We have a house full of him. I got rid of very little after he died.

And even though she doesn’t dwell on the past, on the ‘could’ve, would’ve, should’ve,’ there are times when introspection arrives, and the tears.

You meet someone, you fall in love, you get married, you play house. You build this picture of your future together. And now six years later, that’s not my future. I have to make a whole new one. It’s not what I planned. It’s all different. That’s the hardest thing. I’m grieving for who I could’ve been. I’m angry, I’m sad. I’m not who I thought I’d be. That’s the biggest thing for me. I struggle with what I wish I could be.