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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Kentucky State Rep. Dan Johnson, who was under investigation for alleged sexual molestation, has committed suicide. Bullitt County Sheriff Donnie Tinnell said Johnson shot himself on a bridge on Greenwell Ford Road in Mt. Washington, and the gun was recovered.

As many of us know, a dentist or oral surgeon applies Novocain before the real work begins. This is done to induce a numbing sensation so that we, the patient, will be buffered so as not to feel the oncoming pain as they drill. And drill. And drill. Any dentist or oral surgeon worth their salt does the least amount of drilling necessary — or applies an adequate amount of Novocain — to spare the patient pain. The idea is to spare the patient pain. And then to do the necessary work. In life we also want to spare those...

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. People are now moving from denial to anger, thus the protests. Many will be stuck in denial for a long time proclaiming, "He's not my president." If you watch, you will see a gradual shift over the next few weeks, culminating in the reality of the change in presidents January 20th. People go through the stages at different rates depending upon how attached they were to the person who lost and their own individual coping skills. The worst part is that the depression phase for many is coinciding...

I went to the market Where all the families shop I pulled out my Ka-bar And started to chop Your left right left right left right kill Your left right left right you know I will -Military cadence “You can shoot her…” the First Sergeant tells me. “Technically.” We’re standing on a rooftop watching black smoke pillars rise from a section of the city where two of my teammates are taking machine gun fire. Below, the small cluster of homes we’ve taken over is taking sporadic fire as well. He hands me his rifle with a high powered scope and...

I just have a few words to say about my father. He recently passed away. I am doing something bad (in FR), because I am posting, and then going to bed. And hopefully falling asleep. Although I will have my tablet. So I won't be posting and running. ;) :) haven't slept much since my father died. I was just wondering, how do you deal with becoming an adult orphan? When there is no one you can call for advice? Whenever I see the Cubs, Sox, Blackhawks, Bulls, and later, "da Bears," I want to call him. I cannot even...

Five Remedies for Sorrow from St. Thomas Aquinas Msgr. Charles Pope • April 19, 2016 • Some of you who follow me on Facebook know that I just lost a beloved pet, Daniel, our rectory cat. Losing a pet is not to be equated with losing a spouse, sibling, or friend, but it remains a painful loss. Part of the reason for this, I am convinced, is that we cannot communicate with animals as we do with one another. We cannot know what they are experiencing “inside” and so cannot reassure them or be reassured by them that they...

Today, we found out that we've lost our 22 year old son. He'd been missing for a couple of days and they found the body this evening. He wrecked his motorcycle and ended up in a ditch where nobody could see. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to accept this. I don't know what to do with this. And I can't pray. I'm not mad at G-d or anything like that. I mean that I have no words. I don't know how. Can you please pray for me? Just add me to your prayer list...

Combining literary narrative and raw reflection, September Vaudrey walks through one of life’s worst losses―the death of a child―and slowly becomes open to watching for the unexpected ways God carries her through it. It’s a story of love and tragedy in tandem; a deeply personal memoir from a life forever changed by one empty place. And at its core, Colors of Goodbye calls to the deepest part of our spirits to know that death is not the and that life can be beautiful still.

Losing a pet is heart-wrenching. Anyone who denies this either never had a pet or never had a heart to wrench. We had plenty of time to prepare for our girl's passing, and I mistakenly believed that this would make it easier or somehow a relief when she died. It was not easy and it definitely was not a relief. Zoey was a salty old broad to the end, and the departure of her larger-than-life presence has left us with a huge hole in our world; I can't believe how much I miss her. Of course in thinking about her...

I would like to request your Prayers and thoughts for myself, and my family for the very unexpected passing of my wife. Many of you have seen me refer to her as Mrs. Rikkir, but her name was Patsy. She was 55, and mother to one daughter, and Mee Maw to three grandsons. She was a KY farm girl, who took a stupid NC city boy, and, 29 years ago, pulled him from a self destructive path, and instead gave him a path of love and responsibility. She was universally loved by almost all who met her. I have fielded...

Pope's Address at Ground Zero "This flowing water reminds us of yesterday’s tears, but also of all the tears still being shed today" New York City, September 25, 2015 (ZENIT.org) Staff Reporter | 1905 hits Here is a Vatican translation of the address Pope Francis gave today at an interreligious ceremony at Ground Zero. He began the Spanish-language address apologizing for being unable to give it in English. * * * Dear Friends, I feel many different emotions standing here at Ground Zero, where thousands of lives were taken in a senseless act of destruction. Here grief is palpable. The...

Pun intended. It’s been four months today since my dad was killed in a hit-and-run crash. He was cycling near his home on May 4 and was hit from behind by an intoxicated motorist (who was later apprehended). Dad was killed instantly. As I wrote a month after the crash, my dad was my rock, and our whole family is trying to pick up the pieces of our lives and figure out how to go on without him.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Nobody Knows but Jesus: A Meditation on a Grief Observed By: Msgr. Charles PopeAs a follow-up to the recent post on comforting the sorrowful, I was led to consider the grief of my parents and the difficulties they faced in raising a daughter with serious mental illness.My father died eight years ago, and except for essential papers related to his estate, I simply boxed up most of his papers and stored them in the attic of my rectory for future attention. At long last I am sorting through those boxes. Among his effects were also many...

From author Melinda Tankard Reist, who interviewed many postabortion women: “Women often spoke of being unable to get satisfactory help for their grief from clinics or organizations connected with abortion. Karleen said that when she sought help at a women’s counseling clinic in Sydney she was told it was wrong of her to speak badly of her abortion experience. Kara, from Queensland, told of posting her personal abortion story on an Internet discussion of abortion. She was told to “get lost” – her story wasn’t welcome….If a woman is depressed after an abortion, she is made to feel it’s her...

Oh, I don’t know. (Snip) Ask yourself this, though. Is “optics” really just a Beltway parlor game? My hunch about most low-information voters, a.k.a. most voters, is that they’d struggle to name who the vice president is when asked. We’re lucky if they’re cognizant of what happened to James Foley at all, let alone Obama’s reaction to it. “As a general rule, I think that he’s right that you can’t be held hostage to the news cycle — the man deserves a bit of downtime,” said Jim Manley, a longtime Democratic strategist. “But in this particular instance, I think a...

When we witness the anguish, the anger, the questions, the devastation that comes to families that experience the death of a child, we find ourselves desperate to figure out what we can do, what we can say, that will truly help. In the retreats my husband and I host for couples who have faced the death of a child, participants often talk about the ways people have “been there” for them in the midst of the worst pain they can imagine, as well as the ways people have added to their pain. If you could be a fly on the...

Mary Baxter Gresham was 42 when her invalid son, LeRoy, died in June 1865. She had already lost two infant children and had just lived through the upheaval of the Civil War in Macon, Ga. But when 17-year-old LeRoy, know as “Loy,” died on June 18 in the house where he was born, she was devastated. “God has tried me often and in many ways but never has my heart been so wrung as now,” she wrote to her sister, Sallie, on July 12. “And yet the trial had so much mercy mixed with it that my soul swells within...

Burned out from her job and still mourning the loss of her father, Jinna Yang decided to dramatically shake up her life and honor the memory of a man who always put others first. In April, Yang, 25, quit her job in digital media in Manhattan, sold about 80 percent of her belongings and bought a one-way plane ticket to Iceland. Before she left, she took an old photo of a tuxedo-clad Jay Yang and had a company she found online make a life-size cardboard cutout of her father, who died from cancer at 52 on Aug. 24, 2012. Jay...

Deconstructing The Dead: Cross Over One Last Time To Expose Medium John Edward By Michael Shermer History is not just one damn thing after another, it is also the same damn thing over and over--time's arrow and time's cycle. Fads come and go, in clothing, cars, and psychics. In the 1970s it was Uri Geller, in the 1980s it was Shirley MacLaine, in the 1990s it was James Van Praagh, and to kick off the new millennium it is John Edward. Edward's star is rising rapidly with a hit daily television series "Crossing Over" on the Sci Fi network and...

Requesting prayers for my nephew and his wife who lost a baby. She was 4 months along. It was a little boy. Our family is really hurting right now. Any prayer is sooo appreaciated and I am comforted by the amount of prayer warriors on FR. Thanks. RIMTB