And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (8 page)

“You’re like her,” I continued. “You’re like the labor and delivery nurse of this journey. You’ve been down this road with others before, and although it’s different for everyone, you know what to expect. You know the encouragement, meds, and coaching I’ll need, and you’re willing to stand between me and anything that could distract me from the task at hand.”

She smiled her grin that is gentle, soft, gleaming, confident. “I absolutely am. This bulldog will even wear lip gloss. I’ll keep it light and shiny, if we need to. Tricia, have you seen
Apollo 13
?”

“I have. It’s one of my favorites.”

“When they’re trying to get back to Earth, the NASA specialists on land know that those guys need to save all the energy they can in order to get home. They guide the astronauts on board to unplug everything that requires electricity, so they are even sitting in the dark. They unplug anything that drains the spacecraft at all, anything that takes away from the goal: getting them home safely. You have a close team of people around you, and we’re your specialists. You need to listen to us. You have to unplug from anything that drains you. We have to get you home safely. And we will. We’ll get you home safely.”

I am wordless, swept away by the long-lost ideas of home and safety.

“Tricia, tell me who you were before December 23. What was true of you?”

I thought for a bit. Tears came faster than words. “I was productive. I made lists, and I crossed things off. I was on the go. I didn’t call myself a stay-at-home mom; I was a stay-in-the-van mom. I loved an adventure. I was ready. I was an encourager. I was confident. I was brave.”

Jana listened. She noted my list. “You will be all those things again, Tricia. You will. That girl is in there. She’s just hiding for a while. You’ll be that girl again.”

When I got home, I blasted Pink through the speakers, rattling the picture frames. I danced all over my living room. I leaped and
jumped, twirled and spun, and I sang until my throat felt raw. I danced the speakers off the walls—literally. The vibrations shifted the speakers off the small shelf Robb had built above the TV, and they were dangling by their cords. For the first time I was thankful Robb wasn’t here. I didn’t have to explain this impromptu dance party and damage to our home, all in the name of raging joyfully against sadness.

We were a coffee-shop couple. We spent our Friday nights at the same coffee shop in a pleasant, predictable rut. A smoothie, a mocha, and a deck of cards. I decided to come back on my own. I have taken myself on a date. My first Friday night here without him. Memories dance before my eyes like a movie reel.

On Saturday nights the coffee environment was enhanced by a live jazz trio, one of my favorite experiences. The atmosphere entranced me. One evening I leaned over to Robb and said, “Oh, this place. I love it. I could stay here for hours. It makes me want to sit in a chair and read, read, read, and then write for just as long. I love it.”

He smiled, listening to my description. I was ready for a response so charming and endearing, to show me how much he loved his wife and all the things she loved. Instead, he leaned in close and whispered tenderly, “And I would rather have my fingernails ripped off than to have to read or write right now.” He sat back in his chair, quite pleased with his comparison. Such was his disdain for all things in print. I laughed out loud. I did not see that one coming at all.

At that table, the one in the corner, we played Peanuts, our standard
card game. We streamed Sara Bareilles and Mumford and Sons on Pandora through his smartphone. There was a bad signal, sometimes a long delay between songs; he teased me for humming in the silence. He always beat me at Peanuts, except when he didn’t. Then he claimed to lose on purpose to keep me interested. We sprinkled some ridiculous competition throughout our dates, which I was slightly embarrassed about, especially if I had thrown down my hand of cards or stormed off to the rest room in a snit over speed and scores.

At that table, the one with chairs on one side and a booth on the other, I spent many hours on my own, writing, editing, working on other people’s words. On Monday night, three days before Robb died, during the week when everything would change, I had come here to write and edit a few assignments. In my writings I came across this passage in the second chapter of Hosea:

The verse distracted me from all my plans for efficient deadlines. I couldn’t get anything done for reading the words over and over again. They were rich with meaning, though I knew not what they meant. I picked up my pen, and though I didn’t know what I was going to say, words began to flow from me. On the page I wrote this poem, “Betrothed.”

I set down my pen in the fold of the journal. I sat in still silence, barely breathing, holding on to this holy, unspeakable moment. In that sacred space I wrote this poem that is now written on my heart. The poem was born on Monday evening, and before the sun rose on Thursday morning, my husband died in my arms. God seemed to whisper to me in a poem like a psalm, “Sweet girl of mine, many things are about to change in the next forty-eight hours. But know this: you are mine. By the end of this week, you will no longer be a wife, but you will still be my bride. You are betrothed. Remember this, dear one.”

That booth—the one in the back—that’s where we sat on our last date. It was Tuesday morning, the boys were in preschool, and we had
a “working date” together with our laptops. We sat across from each other, with my feet in his lap and his fingertips grazing the skin inside the edge of my pant leg. We texted each other, things we could have whispered or even said out loud. He posted on Facebook: “On a date with a beautiful girl.”

In another corner of the coffee shop, there is the couch where I sat to receive hundreds—literally hundreds—of guests at his calling hours, his wake, on the night before his memorial service. The evening is both vague and vivid to me, a smattering of images, sounds, and memories.

Tonight I sit here alone.

There is live music: a guitar and two vocalists, together depicting the best of John Mayer. Paper lanterns and white lights swoop from the ceiling. This room is as charming as it has always been. I ask the baristas if I may give them a picture of us, my husband and me. They smile, teary. They will put it on the mantel. If walls can hold a story, this room carries ours.

Well, I’m gonna get out of bed every morning, breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out, and then after a while, I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.

—Tom Hanks as Sam Baldwin,
Sleepless in Seattle

The coroners and forensic specialists delivered the official cause of death: streptococcus pneumonia with complications from sepsis. Robb had lost his spleen in a sledding accident that went horribly wrong when he was fourteen years old, and while most people can live their lives without a spleen, the purpose of that organ is to keep infection contained while the army of blood cells prepares to fight it off. In the days before his death, all of this began with a mild infection—perhaps from something as simple as a paper cut. Without a spleen the infection ran rampant through his bloodstream, attacking his major organs. In septic shock he became toxic to himself.

Each year, about 250,000 people die from sepsis, and my husband joined the roster. All the symptoms Robb presented were signs of sepsis, but they were also signs of the flu. So when the ER doctor found a positive test result for influenza A, he looked no further. Even if he had run more tests and hospitalized him, Robb’s death was inevitable. He was too sick, too far along. All the antibiotics in the hospital, even a full blood transfusion, could not have saved him. Sepsis is a thief, stealing the function of major organs, limbs, even the brain. The cause of Robb’s death has a name, and nothing could have prevented it. We didn’t miss anything, any clues. The name brings a sense of closure and a peace in my spirit. It wasn’t really about the flu at all.

It was a perfectly tragic storm. A tragically perfect storm.

Even if he had lived, he would not have recovered. I’m beginning to wonder, what is healing, anyway? We pray for healing, for a miracle,
for something big, for a few more days. Please, God. Please. We pray to the God who heals all our diseases, the One who promises to work things together for our good. I’m beginning to think differently about this; there’s a paradigm shift happening in my mind. He can say yes. He can heal. But any healing we find now is really only temporary. We’re all going to die. Nobody gets out of here alive.

Sorry. That is morbid. But it’s true.

God didn’t say yes to me. He heard the screams from my bedroom, but he didn’t answer as I begged him to. God didn’t say yes the way we asked him to.

He promises new life; we think it will happen here.

He promises healing; we think it will happen here.

He promises everything will work together for our good; we think it will happen here.

Maybe it will. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes his faithfulness shows up differently.

How do I make sense of the miracles Jesus chooses to perform and those he seems to overlook? Blessings are not formulaic. They are not a + b = c. There is no “if this, then that.” There is no “If I do this, then Jesus will do that.” There is no “If I don’t do this, then Jesus will not allow that.” We can’t make sense of grace, miracles, and answers. Sometimes Jesus says yes, and sometimes he says no. We ask God to do something big, but the truth is, he already has. We pray for healing, but I wonder if we really know what we’re asking for. Is there greater glory in a pain-free life or in his people knowing and trusting him in the shadowed valley? Robb has new life. He is delivered from every
illness and insecurity and wish, and all things have indeed worked together for his good. Perhaps we should pray for courage and strength for those of us who remain, yet unhealed.

Stan is more than seventy years old. He’s a leader in business, a voice in academia, a veteran of the armed forces, an expert in relational mentoring, and a professor of influence. He had hired me to write for him years ago, and as he dictated his notes for speeches and presentations, he became my mentor. During the months of desolation, he called me faithfully every two weeks. I don’t have transcripts, but I remember the things he told me.