This post is unedited, and slightly repetitive (I’ve posted on this subject at least once before). But it’s been on my mind, and I still feel the need to explore this theme.
Losing someone we love to death is an inevitable, yet shattering experience. To have them be there one day then gone the next is a tragic experience that I don’t think we ever truly recover from.
Sure, we go on with our lives, and new people may take on the role that our lost loved one filled—but things are never the same. Blue isn’t quite the same blue anymore, and our sense of time has shortened.
Have you experienced this yet?
About two and a half years ago, I was on vacation in Florida with Chad (then boyfriend, now husband) and some friends. It was the afternoon of Easter Sunday, and we had just returned to the house we were renting after spending the morning on a small, sandy island in a nearby canal.
My life in those moments was sunshine, sand between my toes, a warmth that I so rarely feel having lived most of my life in Minnesota, and the bubbly passion of the new love that was growing between me and Chad.
I was resting on a sofa in the living room, contemplating turning on the TV, when Chad came downstairs from checking his phone. Apparently, my mom had been trying to get a hold of me all day. He said that she had called his parents, and said that there was something wrong with my grandpa.
With dread, I climbed the stairs to find my phone on my bed, and saw that I had many missed calls from both my sister and my mom—none from my dad. It didn’t register consciously then, but my body tensed, waiting.
My mom answered right away when I rang her phone, told me to sit down, and asked if Chad was in the room. I said he was. Then she said the words that shattered me, the words that caused the devastation I’m still trying to sweep up.
“Honey, your dad had a heart attack.”
He was in the hospital, in a coma, and they were cooling his body in an attempt to limit damage to his brain. Or something. My mind was spinning and I didn’t really understand. I felt numbness creep up on me from the inside out.
All that night, and as I boarded a plane back to Minnesota early the next morning, I kept saying to myself, “My dad is dying.” But how could I know that? There was hope, there was God—God could do anything! How awful, uncaring and unloving of me to think such a thought.
But the thought wouldn’t leave me.
Three days later, on April 3rd, 2013, my family and a few friends gathered in Dad’s hospital room to say good-bye. My brother played him to heaven on his guitar, singing away as our tears and broken hearts bid Dad farewell—never to be seen again on this green earth.
The wonder, the hope—the joy—of this absolutely dreadful experience is this: we will see my dad again.
You see, all of us are far from home, on a journey to become ourselves and do our part in building the Kingdom and battling the forces of satan. My dad just got to get off the boat early. He’s home now, whole and happy, experiencing the glory in Christ that he so looked forward to in his life on Earth.
For now, we miss him terribly, and within each of us there is a wound that is still healing—one that will ultimately leave a scar we can’t remove. I can’t say I’m not jealous of my Dad, for he has moved on to wholeness while we are left to pick up our broken pieces.
Again, I’ll ask: Have you experienced this yet?
If you have—have you let God in yet? He holds the superglue, you know, to stick those broken pieces back together. He won’t make you whole—not yet—because in this life we are never whole, but He will give you the strength you need to make it through the grief, the missing, the confusion of losing part of your foundation.
And, ultimately, He will grow in you to fill that hole, to become your sure foundation.
Hannah Roehrick 