When I was ten my older sister broke her ankle when the car she was riding in sped off a winding lake road and slammed into a tree.
When I was sixteen I vomited at the feet of a detained drunk fifteen year-old while, a few feet away, medics shoved my sister’s bones back into her mangled leg and loaded her boyfriend into an ambulance.
A couple years later she and two friends and their small jeep were buried but alive under a pile of steel girders thrown from a jack-knifed eighteen wheeler.
A few Mother’s Days back my Aunt’s heart stopped beating mid-sentence, just after church, in the middle of lunch. She was forty-something.
Just over a year ago an old friend was electrocuted while baptizing students on a Sunday morning. He was thirty-three.
A week ago Becky’s cousin choked on a piece of steak and soon after slept in a medically induced coma while doctors appraised how badly his brain was damaged when it went without oxygen for nearly twenty minutes.
Last night he was “unplugged” from his breathing machine and died. He was thirty-four with a wife and two small girls.
No soundtrack growing more and more dissonant as the moment of tragedy approached. No foreshadowing of events to come. No hint that life as usual would soon or ever be interrupted. No, if life were a movie it would be a jarring thing to watch. The beach party scene is suddenly interrupted by footage of a young girl limping from a crunched vehicle to flag down passing motorists. Two small girls in pajamas sit at a breakfast with their dad and then, just what seems like seconds later, stand sobbing in Sunday dress beside his casket.
It’s as if the editor is splicing bits of film together at random with no concern for how his decisions make the audience feel. The end result is beautiful and bizarre and frightening but truly makes no sense to most of us most of the time There’s no guessing who or what will enter the frame next.
Cali Amy says:
Deepest sympathies for Becky’s cousin’s family.
Cristy says:
I’m sorry for your family’s loss and know that I will be praying for all of you.
A little over a year ago, my cousin (age 36) died slowly from the effects of cancer. My best friend’s husband (also age 36) died suddenly from an unknown cause (autopsy was “inconclusive”) while he was standing up, never even tried to “catch” himself on the way down. Each left a spouse and 5 young children behind. Both seemed pretty sudden to me. Life is a jarring thing to watch because it’s NOT a movie.
Cristy says:
Oh, and your sister should seriously consider another mode of transportation. WOW!
Sue says:
I’m so sorry, Shaun. I’m praying for all of you.
Nancy Tyler says:
Even when death is predicted by the odds, by the doctors and by the monitors as the beeps grow slower and farther apart, it is still beyond jarring to find yourself left behind.
God gives grace to the young widow standing at the foot of her beautiful husband’s casket.
He gives the means for healing for the brokenhearted, though “normal” is never really normal again and the healing comes with scars.
And though the “whys” are elusive to those who have stood over fresh graves and felt the maddening constraint of being penned in behind the invisible wall that separates the earthbound from the heavenly…the cruel mercy is the knowledge that there is a purpose in the pain.
Part of that purpose may be to remind us relentlessly that life–seemingly random maybe, but ordered, planned nonetheless…really is but a breath.
God help us to come away changed then, intent on making that breath a deep one.
Kat says:
It’s stories like this that I don’t want to hear. I don’t want you or anyone to write about them and I don’t want to think about it.
But at the same time, it reminds me to savor each moment with my family. It helps me to forgive more easily and overlook small problems more quickly.
hollybird says:
I am learning more and more that although God never changes, my experience with Him does. It’s in moments like these that you write about where our view of God is tested and tweaked. He is full of grace, even in the midst of death; somehow that seems odd to me. He is full of mercy, even in the midst of pain; somehow that sounds contradictory. I will never understand Him and His ways, but I am thankful for both. For without Him, His mercy and His grace, there would be no sting taken out of death. The world needs to hear these stories of ours; they need to see us hurting and then being cradled by our Abba/Daddy. Thank you for this. I pray His peace to fall on your family.
ally simpson says:
whoa thats really sad and shocking………….sorry man
Grovesfan says:
It’s the phone call that comes right after the 14 hour night shift in the Gulf War, telling me that my father’s had a stroke and a heart attack, is on life support against his wishes, and I should probably get home.
I made it home. 30 of the longest hours of my life to get there.
Seeing my hero, my dad, the best one that ever was, hooked up to all sorts of junk, unable to speak, or do more than blink his eyes in response to my presence, was the closest thing to pure torture I hope to ever experience again.
It was finding out afterward that he’d had several “mini” strokes he didn’t tell anyone about and had pretty much stopped eating and sleeping because he was scared for me and my husband and son I’d left behind in order to serve. Those damn Arabs killed my dad! No, I killed my dad because I thought I was doing the right thing.
It took my Heavenly Father, my perfect Father, to convince me otherwise. It was only through prayer, grace, and a peace that comes only by knowing beyond a doubt that my dad was exactly where he wanted to be. In heaven, with his Father. My mother joined him there ten months later after a long battle with cancer. Peace came somewhat quicker then for me. She didn’t suffer anymore and she was with my dad again. The only man she’d ever loved. Again, only the peace of knowing where they are, is what sustains me now.
I ask God to grant you and Becky and the rest of your family that same peace.
Beth
Cruz-Control says:
I was involved in a hit-and-run auto accident last week. I was rear-ended by a drunk driver on a bridge over Lake Waco. My SUV rolled three times on the bridge, but didn’t go over. I was able to literally walk away from it.
But I’m still dealing with the emotions of it all. Mainly, everything you’ve just talked about… just how suddenly it all could have ended, like the ending of a symphony with out a grand finale and a long fermata… just an unexpected, abrupt stop.
What a gift life is. I’m learning to cherish it.
Susanne says:
I’m so sorry for your family’s loss. We just cannot understand why things like this happen…impossible.