Failed Check In

 It was supposed to be a typical Sunday night.

Like it was slightly atypical in that I would need to go to bed far earlier than normal because I had a 5 am shift today, so if I wanted to be more awake and functional I would need to be in bed by 10ish to get at least 6ish hours of sleep. -Not that that always works, but I do try to not deprive myself of sleep when I have the 5 am shifts. 

I was still a good couple hours away from this self imposed bedtime when I got a call from my sister.

Which in itself was rather unusual as she doesn't usually call me. But when she does it's usually due to needing an opinion on something or to vent or to like help her work through problems.

Last night it was more of the "calm me down" sort of phone call as my sister was, well, panicking. 

Because her husband is currently out on a camping trip with some other family.....and he failed to check in at his normal time.

Which normal time was 'around dark.'

And my sister had talked to him earlier in the day around 3:30 but hadn't heard from him since.

And the stalking app (as my family as the app to check everyone's phone locations) showed that he hadn't moved from his current spot since 4pm. 

Which okay.

Not unusual for that to happen especially if you leave your phone somewhere. And like, the area the phone was shown at had an e-bike shop and a river-rafting place. And the river rafting place --when I checked their website had "overnight trips" so like....maybe he'd just taken a river rafting trip and hadn't made it back to the starting point yet.

But my sister said that he usually checks in before he goes out of cell range to let her know he wouldn't have service. 

Yet at the same time...he's known to get 'caught up in the moment' and forget to tell plans and such.

But like overall while it was concerning that he wasn't responding to texts or calls nor could she reach the other people in his gtroup....more than likely they just weren't near the phones and were perfectly fine.

I did manage to calm her down enough that my sister was okay with hanging up with the plan to give it until the morning for him to check in again. 

-As usually he checks in at least twice in the evening....but he missed both checks last night.

But like...overall I didn't really get the sense that anything was wrong. Like it was worrisome for sure, but not too concerning....

Until I ended up doing some research in the area he was staying at and saw that there was a flash flood warning for the area.

And like around the same time I was discovering this, my roomie came home from her own trip to the south of us stating that she got caught in a major rainstorm and even encountered fingernail sized hail to the point where she had to take shelter at a gas station because a) the rain was heavy enough she couldn't see the road and b) the hail was heavy enough she was worried about damaging her car.

Which concerning.

But like my roomie came from the west side of the south side of the state, while my brother-in-law was on the east side of the south side of the state. 

So maybe it wasn't a correlation....but at the same time....his area had shown that there was a flash flood warning in effect until 5pm.

And as it neared 10pm my internet search pulled up the fact that the city near where my brother-in-law was....had flooded. I found videos online showing floods in the street...the video of this flooding being posted around 5 hours earlier...which would be around 5pm...which would be an hour after my brother-in-law's last check in with the app.

So like. It was worrisome. Because it seemed to indicate that he may have been caught up in the flooding somehow. Like if he was on the river, or out on a bike, or even hiking....he may have needed to take shelter to wait out the storm and for the flooding to die down. 

Which I did not tell my sister of any of this. Because I knew that the knowledge that the area her husband 'vanished' in was experiencing flooding would NOT help her stress levels at all.

Especially since she was quite concerned back in August when we took a sibling trip over to Zions to hike the narrows...about flash flooding as we were in the midst of monsoon season where there were evening rainstorms every single night. Luckily the area didn't experience flash floods until like 2 days after we'd come back home. So were lucky in that regards.

But the fact that brother-in-law was once again in a flood zone where I now knew active flooding was happening....

It was stressful.

I know to try not to let others stress get to me. But like. This is family and I have to admit I was worried for him.

Not that I could do much from here and it's not like anything was 'actually' wrong. For all we knew his phone had died and he just hadn't been able to charge it yet.

Still. The worry kept me up for a couple hours longer than I'd planned to be up because like....what if something had gone wrong? What if something had happened to him?

Like if my sister finally found herself a widow, what would happen to her and her family then? Would she have to get a job? Who would help with the kids? Where would she live? Would she have to move elsewhere?

But also I was trying to think of contingency plans. Like, okay what if he doesn't check in in the morning. How early could I leave work to go drive down south and try and track him down myself? Would I take my car? Did I trust my car to take me? Would I take my sister? Would she call the police and wait for their report before trying to do anything? Who would watch the kids? Who would drive down with me? Could my family come and help? Could her in-laws also come down to search? 

Like. So many thoughts whirling in my head as I desperately tried to relax enough to fall asleep because I still had to be at work at 5 am and I at this point I was only going to be getting like 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up. 

So yah. Really stressful. Constantly checking the stalking app to see his location hasn't updated is not good to the mental health for sure.

And I tried to put it from my mind this morning as well.

Because like...after praying and such....I got the feeling that "all was fine. He's okay." and it's easy to keep that optimism....until I would check the stalking app and see the location still unchanged. *exhales* So I'd have to go through the process of calming myself down again and reremember that I felt like things would be okay. That he was okay. So I shouldn't be stressing further.

Which like....I was going to text my sister a little after 8am to see if she'd heard from him yet.

But then thought that maybe that would still be too early. So I'd do it around 9 after the store opened.

I was still debating about being the one to reach out first though....because like if she wasn't freaking out then I didn't want to freak her out by bringing it up to her again....but I also wanted to know if she'd heard from him yet as I wasn't certain she'd reach out to let me know or not as communication isn't always the strong point with my family....though usually in more 'emergency' situtations it is. So I hoped that she'd let me know if there was any changes and such.

In any case. I ended up getting busy at work and it was nearly 10 am before I had a chance to check my phone again to see that my sister had texted.

"He's Alive!!"

Which *slumps in relief* YAY!!!!! And a check of the stalking app confirmed that his phone had finally updated his location. So double YAY!!

Turns out that they'd gone hiking up a canyon....that ended up not having cell service....and then "there was a flood."

So basically he and his companions ended up finding a dry place to camp and waited out the storm overnight before heading back into cell service in the morning to make contact.

To say my sister was relieved is an understatement for sure.

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi