One Year After Randy's Death

How I am navigating the rugged terrain of grief

“I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am. Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it.” ~ Gerald Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss

My cell phone rang late in the afternoon that day. It was Pam. Randy had had a heart attack, he was in ICU. And it did not look good.

I hung up the phone in stunned panic and shock, walked downstairs to tell Susy and she urged me to call Pam back and ask if I should fly to Texas where they lived. I called and Pam thought it would be a good idea if I came.

The next morning I found myself in the hospital lobby met by my nephew Dan, who hugged me and wept in my arms. It felt like I had cement in my shoes as we walked off the elevator on the intensive care unit.

For the next 12 hours we paced around the ICU room where Randy lay between life and death. We prayed, whispered under our breath, held each other, spoke to Randy, and hoped.

Randy passed into eternity around 8:30pm on May 23rd.

Immediately after his passing, I asked Pam and their three sons and their wives to gather around Randy’s body in the hospital room and we prayed together. Randy and I had agreed some years earlier that whichever one of us was alive when the other died he would recite the Aaronic blessing from Numbers 6, which I did with his family:

“The Lord bless you and keep you

The Lord cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you

The Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

In those early days after Randy’s sudden passing I often had to focus on simply breathing, trying to get some sleep, putting one foot in front of the other. I felt zombie-like. I had never felt that depth of sorrow and pain and disorientation in my 60 plus years of life.

Somehow I got a hold of Megan Devine’s book, It’s OK That You’re Not OK. Once in a while you read a book that goes straight to your heart. This book was it for me. Every page put words to my raw emotions. For example:

“There are losses that rearrange the world. Deaths that change the way you see everything, grief that tears everything down. Pain that transports you to an entirely different universe, even while everyone else thinks nothing has really changed.”

“The reality of grief is far different from what others see from the outside. There is pain in this world that you can't be cheered out of. You don't need solutions. You don't need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it. You need someone to hold your hands while you stand there in blinking horror, staring at the hole that was your life.”

Devine captured some of the terror that I felt day in and day out as I woke up to the stark reality of my world without Randy in it. For the first month or two I dreaded waking up in the morning because I would be shocked, again, by this new reality.

Every morning it felt like a punch in the gut, but worse.

My life for much of the past year has felt like a series of unfinished sentences. Nothing has seemed complete. Most things have felt disjointed. And yet I slowly moved from intense pain to feeling numb much of the time to beginning to see glimmers of light.

Now a year into grief I am more “settled” in it. What I mean is that I have had to learn to give myself again and again to sadness and loss and to embrace it rather than to fight it. I’ve had to learn to yield to it and not stuff it. For me this has meant leaving things unfinished, or not getting things done as I had planned. It has also meant staring blankly at the. sky or a wall for what has felt like an eternity.

What About Faith and Heaven?

When Pam and I had to call my mother and tell her that Randy had died, Pam graciously and compassionately said to her, “Randy is with Jesus. He passed away last night.” Mom was speechless at the news.

A core belief of Christianity is that those who believes in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and that “Jesus is Lord” are with God for eternity. In heaven.

I believe this. Truly.

The Bible also says:

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” (1 Thes. 4:12-14)

I also believe this. Truly.

AND … it still hurts like hell when you lose someone suddenly, without warning. Can both of these things be true at the same time? I think so.

We can believe that God actually numbers our days and years (Randy’s was 68 years) and also that death is abhorrent, it is not “natural” in that God did not create the universe initially with death in it.

What Has Been Helpful?

I hope that somehow my pain from loss can be helpful and even redemptive for others who will experience a sudden loss as our family did. Some things have been especially helpful to me.

Discovering others who have suffered great loss

Shortly after Randy passed I sought out people who would “get it” without me having to explain anything.

TJ understood all too well because his brother had died suddenly 8 years prior.

Ed understood because he has been a family doctor for a generation and has walked with people through this kind of suffering.

Ashraf understood because he lost his father to cancer previously.

Miriam got it because her mother had died recently.

But the list of fellow sufferers is relatively short. That is not a critique of friends. It is simply and profoundly that people have different experiences and not too many people have lived through a sudden loss as I did.

And, each person’s loss is unique to them with circumstances that fit them alone. One person’s grief is different than the next person’s. You just cannot compare griefs!

A good counselor, GriefShare, and Susy (not in that order!)

Some years ago when we lived in Denver I saw a good counselor, Mark. Shortly after Randy died and as we were moving back to Denver I contacted him. For the past year I have seen him about twice per month. In a word, it has been cathartic. I have spent most sessions in tears (and I am not much of a crier usually). He has listened, related, offered a bit of practical counsel, but was mostly present with me in grief.

I attended about half the sessions of a 13-week GriefShare group, something I did not even know existed a year ago. It was “instant community” with about 10 other people who had recently lost a loved one. It took so much energy to go to the group each Thursday afternoon - something like going to the dentist to get a tooth pulled every week! And yet while it was difficult, the group also helped me know that I am not crazy for feeling as I do. And that I can have fellow grievers on the journey with me.

Susy has been the constant in all of this. She has been present and has accepted and embraced me however I was in the moment. I have had times of unexpected tears, sadness, having to take a nap. And Susy has been there for it all. It has not been easy for her either, as she has her own grief process due to Randy’s death.

Relinquishing the Future

“When someone you love dies, you don't just lose them in the present or in the past. You lose the future you should have had, and might have had, with them. They are missing from all the life that was to be.” ~ Megan Devine

I am a planner, as was my brother. He had recently moved to Texas and I was moving back to Denver. We dreamed about he and Pam coming to Denver in the summers when it is blazing hot in Texas and staying with us. And in the winter when it is frigid in Denver we would migrate to Texas to spend time with he and Pam.

Those dreams vanished in an instant. The loss was like peeling an onion - with several layers to the loss. Randy’s death changed my personal future and the hopes that I had of sharing future memories together. We were going to get to know each other’s grand kids who live near by. We were going to visit places in Texas and Colorado together.

I am learning to surrender these hopes and dreams. It has been a slow, arduous process, and much of my grief today continues to be around what will NOT be in the future.

Redemptive Work

As I write this early morning I am sitting in a hotel room in Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq. I am here to meet with a variety of people about our medical work among refugees and others. I had not planned to be here but decided a month ago that it was important to make this trip.

I am a driven person and can easily dive into work to avoid the pain of grief. I don’t think I have done that much in the past year, although I am sure I have at times. But now, as I want to honor Randy’s life and legacy, I believe there is redemptive work to do and he would want me to get on with life.

So I am in Iraq now, a place I love with a people I love (Kurdish folks!). And I am hoping to make some difference in our broken world. I’m also grateful that I am with a friend of ours - Miriam - who knows this kind of grief all too well. I wish she did not. But she understands and is easy to be with.

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There’s a part of me that wants to write a “fairy tale” ending, or “they lived happily ever after.” But I cannot. Today I am both deeply grateful for Randy and deeply grieve that he is no longer with us. That’s at least a complete sentence!