There have been two HUGE losses in my life in the last two months. I don’t know how to recover. The boat feels as if it has filled, already, with so much water, that I’ll never be able to dump enough buckets to keep from sinking.

On April 23, 2023 my 14 year old nephew died…suicide. He was so very young. So full of life and joy. My sister said he was full of color and noise and, with him, it made perfect sense to me. It was so unexpected and shocking. My family reeled from the loss and from the questions…why? My husband and I drove the hour and a half to get to my sister and her family as quickly as we could. We sat in her driveway as police officers and investigators traipsed in and out of her home, documenting the scene.

My sister and her husband were the ones to see him first. They heard a gunshot and ran upstairs to his bedroom, having to kick in the door to get to him. A gruesome scene that no parent should ever have to endure and that will never leave their memory.

We spent the next two weeks with them, making arrangements, fielding phone calls and text messages, helping organize food deliveries and visitors, and just trying to provide any comfort or relief that we could.

I didn’t know then that those were the last two weeks my husband and I would have together.

We went home for my middle son’s graduation from college and then for the couple of days before my husband was scheduled for a “routine” and common surgery. Something our surgeon had performed hundreds of times. The details of what happened are not important at this moment except that my husband died just after midnight following his surgery. Our surgeon was not at fault; there was a complication that is not common but is known to be a risk of this particular surgery. It was a complication that could have been corrected fairly easily but the hospital staff overlooked every warning sign that it was occurring even as we kept begging for someone to help because we, as nurses with a combined 50 years of experience, knew something was not right and we were ignored, treated as if my husband was just experiencing anxiety and I was being an overzealous caregiver as I advocated for treatment for my husband.

I was with him when he coded. I yelled for the nurse to call the code, to get help. I was escorted shortly after to an ICU waiting room where I was told he would be transferred.

He never arrived there. Instead I was approached nearly an hour later by a physician who had responded to the code blue and three other unidentified people, all walking toward me in tandem. He never had to tell me. I saw the look on his face as he walked toward me down the hall and all I remember is screaming “NOOOO!” and sliding down the wall to the floor, a puddle of despair.

And so then my own grief journey began, just fifteen days after my sister’s world had crumbled. I’d walked with her through the beginning of her walk with grief and still had no idea how to keep breathing as I was navigating it myself. My husband was 49 years old. A little younger than I am, even. How did this happen?

I wrote this following passage when my nephew passed away, unknowing that tragedy would soon strike again, and I couldn’t seem to figure out how it had happened. Why? What next? How do I do this? The next few paragraphs are from the day after my sweet nephew died, but also strangely applied the morning I got home from the hospital after my husband dying:

When I put these clothes on yesterday morning, everything was normal. And now I’m still wearing them, but nothing will ever be normal again. It’s irrevocable. 💔 Jesus, help me. Please.

I still don’t understand how you can wake up one morning and everything is “normal”, the day goes the way most of the rest of them go, you’re just living in the beautiful monotony of everyday life…and then it’s gone. The normal is gone, irrevocably, unexplainedly, devastatingly gone. There are why’s that can never be answered. It feels as if the world just stopped, or it swallowed you up, and yet everyone is still moving around, doing normal things, when normal is gone and can never come back. Your heart aches like it’s being squeezed and pummeled and tortured and savagely ripped apart and people you love are suffering in a way that will never, ever allow them to breathe a whole breath again. Terrible, awful things happen to other people, the ones on TV or movies, all the time…but not to us, right?

It was never supposed to be like this. It’s not supposed to be this way. There would have been a warning. Someone turn back the clock. Please, please, please, turn it back. Give me time back. Please.

---

After my husband, Scott, died, I began to use writing as a tool to process my grief, as I often had in the past. What follows in the upcoming posts are the things I wrote about as grief fell over me in wave upon wave, crashing and pounding me into something that felt unrecognizable. The world became unfamiliar. Time didn’t make sense as it somehow moved quickly and agonizingly slowly at the same time. The only way I knew to sort out and process what I was feeling was to write about it, get it down in print so that I could read back over it, change the wording to match the way it really felt, and then wait for the next wave to crest.

My hope in posting this is that, in some way, my thoughts will reach someone who is suffering a similar path and that, as some of these feelings resonate with you, you will realize that you are not alone. You are not “going crazy,” because, believe me, it feels like it sometimes. You’ll realize that the things you’re being forced to experience are normal for this process and, most importantly, that you will live through it.

As I’m typing this introduction, I confess that I am not yet on the other side of this Category 5 hurricane, the storm that still rages over my everyday life. I don’t even know if there is “another side” to come out on. As I begin posting my journal pages to you, two months have passed since he died. Two months since the last time that I saw his face when he was alive and breathing. Two months since the last day he said “I love you, baby,” and I said it back.

In much of these journal pages that will follow, I am speaking myself into healthy patterns of grieving by giving reminders of the One who holds my future and to turn to Him when I am lost, alone, sobbing, screaming, questioning, and distraught.

God didn’t “take him too soon.” Neither of them, actually. I don’t even believe that God caused his death. It was a result of the prevalence of sin in our world, like so many other things that take place here. People who made poor decisions about his care caused it. Lack of empathy caused it. Lack of professionalism caused it. Maybe even some ignorance caused it, although it doesn’t seem that way. The enemy is always seeking ways to destroy those who love Jesus and the willingness of others to engage in sin are ingredients of the perfect recipe.

He almost succeeded with me, in destroying me; he’s still actively trying every single day. Those are all things that I have had to come to terms with forgiving; admittedly, I backtrack on forgiveness at times and then have to lay it all down at the feet of Jesus again. You’ll read of times when my soul cried out in anger comingled with anguish. And you’ll read about how I walk myself back toward Jesus so that I can feel at peace.

My husband knew Jesus. He’s getting to hang out with his own brother, who died just 15 months prior, my step-dad who thought Scott was the cat’s meow, my Granny, whom he never met Earthside but who I know would have absolutely loved him just because of the way he loved me. Scott is living in glory now and I’m thankful for that. He isn’t in pain, isn’t suffering the way we are down here. He is free and is spending his days worshipping. I can’t wait to see him again and get the grand tour.

I hope in reading on, you’ll find a little bit of your own peace. I hope you’ll be drawn to rest in the arms of Jesus when you can find no rest any other way. I hope, in some way, your pain is diminished, even a little, by the words of someone who has traveled a similar path. I hope it feels like I am holding your hand as we manage it together.

In His Love,
Jennifer