PARKER, Colo. -- It's impossible to imagine what Ryan Laber is going through. He lost his wife and two kids all at once under horrific circumstances.
How do you move forward? How do you live? Laber teaches the greatest lesson of all -- to remember the good in life and to hold onto hope.
He spoke for the first time to the public on Saturday, three days after his spouse and their two kids were found dead inside a parked van in a Lone Tree parking lot. His wife, Jennifer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Adam and Ethan, their two sons, died from single gunshot wounds.
Laber chose to speak during a public vigil at O'Brien Park in Parker because he always loved taking his kids there.
Through his grief, Ryan wanted to get a message across. He wanted everyone to know who Jennifer really was.
"My wife Jen had an immense love for her boys," he explained to the crowd of friends and family in front of him. "She dedicated her life to them."
Ryan revealed Jennifer suffered from depression for years.
"She had a sickness. As a couple and a family we learned to cope, to learn and to manage," he said. "We reached a point years ago where the darkness had subsided for a family to be born."
That's when Adam and Ethan were born. The boys loved their mom dearly as she suffered silently.
"Depression can alter reality and uproot every sensibility," he said.
At the end of the vigil, Ryan asked the crowd to take blue glass gems in remembrance. The family had a ritual of placing blue glass gems in their backyard for discovery.
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